gah! just under the wire!
EEEEP! Okay, I know that this is a little late (like, five minutes late, but still! Late!), but it is DONE. It is DONE, and there is PORN, and it is LONG and kind of got out of my control. And yet, I kind of love this story. It's fun, and guess what: IT IS ENTIRELY DEVOID OF ANGST. *gasps and is horrified* I am so proud of myself. :)
TITLE: Boiling Point
AUTHOR: anniesj
SUMMARY: Six hours stuck in a closet with someone you love -- it's the best kind of hell imaginable.
RATING: NC-17
WORDS: 8,415 (dude, I KNOW. *gawks*)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: For the rsficathon, written for adrianaslyth, who requested MWPP-era and minimal angst. Again, THERE IS NO ANGST HERE. This is a huge thing for me. Be proud. :)
"This is all your fault, you know."
See, this is how all of their arguments start: the assignment of blame from one party to the other, usually (and in this case) Remus piling it all on Sirius's poor, over-burdened shoulders with that cool, even voice of his. It's not fair. Sirius always gets blamed for these fiascos. He thinks it has something to do with his reputation.
Sirius scowls, swats angrily at his dirty, messed-up hair. "Bugger that, it wasn't my idea to see if Hogwarts had a fucking boiler room."
Remus purses his lips and cocks an eyebrow. "Well, you were the one who insisted that a boiler room couldn't possibly exist, and now you've been proven wrong, haven't you?"
Hogwarts does indeed have a boiler room. A very large, very dirty, very hot boiler room that exists somewhere underneath the castle, full of furnaces that radiate heat, with enchanted shovels that continuously feed coal into the burners. It also has a very small, very cramped broom closet near the back, and that broom closet just so happens to have a ridiculously indestructible steel door on it.
Naturally, this is where Remus and Sirius are now stuck.
It's a tiny rectangle of a room, full of dirty rags and an awful dead-rat smell, and the two of them are cramped up on the floor next to each other like bloody sardines in one of Peter's foul-smelling tins. Snarling, Sirius kicks angrily at the door again. "Well, it's definitely your fault for insisting that if there was a boiler room, it had to be included on the bloody Map. Ha! Like anyone would ever have reason to visit this pit."
Behind him, Remus shifts irritably, and one of his knobby knees jabs Sirius in the rib and makes him howl. "Oh, shut up," Remus hisses. "It was for the sake of completion. Honestly, do you want a comprehensive map of Hogwarts or do you want a shoddy knock-off you could buy at Zonko's? And besides that, it was your half-brained notion that there might be explosives in this room that led to us even looking in here, and how you ever managed to lose our wands between here and there I'll never understand."
"Well, there's fire down here," Sirius says defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. "You know how much I like fire, Moony. It's pretty and it eats things. Like clothes, or frogs, or Snape's homework."
Remus groans, shifts, and the knee stabs Sirius again mercilessly. "That was intentional," Sirius grumbles.
"Oh, just shove it, Black," Remus says, and does it again.
*****
There are a thousand other places on this earth where Remus would like to be right now. His bed in Gryffindor Tower tops the list, yes, with its velvety drapes that always smell warm like tea instead of moth-eaten and dusty like his bedclothes back home. Or the library would be nice, especially if it was empty, where the other boys couldn't find him away from his friends and bother him about his clothes all afternoon when he was simply trying to read.
Of course, Antarctica would also be preferable to this.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Wincing, Remus opens his eyes and sees Sirius leaning heavily against him, kicking his feet as hard as he can against the door. Each kick does nothing but force another dull steel groan into the room, and it's beginning to make Remus's headache into something lethal. The room is dark, cramped, full of things that smell thick and damaged. Burned cloths. Gasoline. Rat droppings. A faint red light peeps under the door and makes everything look like fire. Remus is beginning to sweat.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!" Sirius screams right against Remus's ear, slamming his feet over and over again into the door. "SOMEONE HELP US! WE'RE IN FUCKING DISTRESS DOWN HERE!"
Something crucial and sharp twists in Remus's brain and his head screams in time with Sirius's obscenity-laced pleas for help, and then Remus screams, too, shoving his hands against his friend's shoulders to make him stop. "Oh, for the love of God, Sirius, no one's going to hear you!" he shouts. "We're stuck, all right? It's just after midnight, the house elves have all turned in, and if we're lucky, they'll come down and check on the furnaces in the morning. But until then, we're buggered. Royally, utterly buggered. So just. Shut. UP!"
Suddenly, Remus realizes that he's shaking Sirius by his shoulders, and he startles, releases him. Sirius frowns at him. You all right there, Moony?"
"I'm fine," Remus snaps, glaring at him and feeling terrible all at the same time. "I just have a headache, and you beating incessantly and uselessly on that door isn't helping matters in the least."
Amazing, how Sirius can turn from full-fledged pain in the ass to kicked puppy in the blink of an eye. His lips pout, and he looks down at the floor. "Sorry."
Remus says nothing. He just closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on something other than this fetid-smelling room, the burn of chemicals, the pressure of the walls, the excruciating build of the heat. He finds it odd when the thing he hones in on happens to be the pretty way the light darts through the shadowy thick of Sirius's hair.
"Moony?"
Remus blinks. "Yes, Sirius?"
His eyes are wide, begging things. "Are you going to be mad at me all night?"
He hates that he does this. He hates that Sirius always has to ask, always has to use that terrible need-me voice that makes some inexplicable part of Remus tumble and cave, even when Remus wants nothing more than to just wash his hands with him and be done with it. But then Sirius will look up at him with those pitiful blue-slate eyes and make his voice soft and fragile ...
Remus sighs, feels himself melt. "Well, since I don't fancy arguing with you for the next seven hours, I guess not."
When Sirius grins and kisses him on the top of his nose, Remus feels himself turn pink and is briefly glad that the dark is there to conceal it.
*****
It takes approximately forty-five minutes before Sirius's stomach starts growling and he starts thinking about food. Muffins and pumpkin pasties, chocolate frogs, thick meaty stews, stuffed quail ...
Remus frowns. "Stop that."
Another churn of his belly, and Sirius scowls, shifts around. "How do you even hear that?"
More body shifting; neither one of them can really get comfortable stuffed down in the dark, jammed into this horrible cube (where, by the way, there were sadly no explosives to be found). They keep changing positions, but Remus has gone through a growth spurt in the last month and his long, lanky bones won't fold up the way they used to. It's also made his robes and sleeves a tad too short, exposing his wrists whenever he writes. It's kind of adorable.
Currently, Sirius has his back to the wall and Remus is pressed up against his waist, arms wrapped around his legs, chin on his practically lethal-sharp knees. "Can feel it," Remus says, wriggling a bit against Sirius's stomach, making it growl again. "See? So stop it. You're not helping my headache."
Irritably, Remus gives one last thrash against Sirius's chest, accidentally brushing the front of Sirius's pants in the process. A spark of warmth flutters inexplicably, and Sirius blinks, startled. The air is suddenly getting thicker. The air's not the only thing getting thicker. Awkwardly, Sirius shifts in his seat, feels dry-mouthed, strange. He wonders if he's going to die down here.
"I wonder if we're going to die down here," he says, and Remus sighs, relaxes a little.
"We're not going to die down here," he says. It's not a reassuring nugget of bullshit, thankfully; Remus's matter-of-fact clipped tones make no mistakes. "Like I said, the house elves will have to come down here in the morning to check on the burners. Save your energy so you can bang against that door when they get here."
"But you don't know that the house elves will come," Sirius argues. "After all, you said it yourself -- all the shovels are charmed to perform their own tasks without anyone watching them."
"All magic has to be checked up on," Remus says. "For heaven's sake, don't you ever pay attention in class? Magic isn't something that you can just unleash into the wild. You have to keep tags on it, don't you, make sure that it hasn't mucked itself up without you there keeping an eye on it." Remus elbows Sirius gently in the ribs. "Kind of like you."
Sirius makes a face and sulks back into the thick cement wall. "Do you always have to be so goddamn logical, Moony? Makes it hard to carry on a conversation, you know. It's just a hypothetical. A conversation-maker. You know. Something to pass the time and keep our minds off how damn hungry we both are?"
Remus frowns. "I really am hungry."
Groaning, Sirius leans back and gives up. Remus is obviously not made for human conversation, not when he's always so methodical and factual and uses that aren't-I-clever voice all the time like it's some kind of punctuation. No, Remus is much more tolerable when he's quiet, the weight of his head resting on Sirius's chest, mussed copper-gold strands right under Sirius's nose. When he inhales Remus, he can smell paper and ink and the faintest trace of chocolate, and it makes that funny, rosy feeling gather and contract low in his belly. His stomach growls.
An annoyed noise whines in Remus's throat and he wriggles again. "Sirius, I told you to stop that." The bumps of Remus's spine suddenly slide against the length of Sirius's cock and he feels it jerk, strong and urgent, ridiculously hot. Sirius freezes, eyes wide, but Remus just makes another dissatisfied noise and shifts away without even noticing. "Stupid hungry bastard."
For once, Sirius doesn't argue.
*****
Ever since Remus found a book on Muggle psychology in his father's study last summer, he's become sort of obsessed with psychoanalyzing people. His friends, his family, his fellow students, his professors ... he supposes it's natural, and while he certainly doesn't put any real weight on any of his analyses (Remus is very well aware of just how fucked up he himself is, thank you very much), he can't help but imagine. Little experiments here and there. Thoughts and ponderings. And yes, on more than one occasion, Remus has wondered what would happen if you locked Sirius Black in a little room for an extended period of time, but honestly, hasn't everybody?
But he definitely never imagined himself stuck in the room with him. That was absolutely not part of the deal.
Sirius is singing. Slapping his knee in a sloppy kind of rhythm that sadly suggests that Sirius Black will never be much of a dancer and singing in a horrible, off-key voice that makes Remus's bone marrow curdle and wail.
"I'm stuck in a room with Mooooony
If I don't eat soon, I'll go looooony
I'd eat him except for he's so puuuuuny
Nothing else rhymes with that word ..."
Remus hits him. It's very satisfying to hit Sirius, mostly because Sirius never hits back (well, almost never, but it's rare and Sirius always swears it's for his own good). He supposes that a part of him should be annoyed with the way Sirius sometimes treats him like he's made out of glass, but a greater part of him likes it, just because he's the only thing Sirius treats with any sort of care.
Plus, this way, Sirius can be easily manipulated and controlled. "Knock it off," Remus snaps. "You're tone deaf and it's making my soul cry."
"I thought music was supposed to make your soul cry," Sirius points out. "At least, that's what you always say when you try to get me to listen to opera."
"That's a different kind of crying."
Moaning in his most theatrical way possible, Sirius topples over on his side and buries his face in Remus's neck. "Oh, come on, Moony, I'm fucking going out of my mind," he wails. "You've got to give me something to eat. I'm so hungry, and ... wait ..."
Miniscule, short puffs of breath suddenly dance across the sensitive juncture of Remus's neck and shoulder, like tiny hummingbird kisses lighting over his skin. His heartbeat doubles; his palms start sweating. Remus swallows hard as Sirius sniffs intently at his neck. "What the bloody hell are you doing?" he manages.
Sirius follows his nose upward, to the curve of Remus's jaw. "That's not what I think I smell, is it ... no, you wouldn't ..."
The very tip of Sirius's nose brushes Remus's earlobe and it sings, it cries, it croons the sweetest aria ever written, and Remus goes suddenly excruciatingly hard. "Sirius--"
One deep, dark breath and it takes everything in Remus not to buck his hips before Sirius pulls back and snarls at him hungrily.
"Chocolate."
Before Remus can react, Sirius pounces on top of him, his hands scrambling desperately through the folds of Remus's heavy robes. His hands are everywhere, fierce little daggers jabbing left and right, and Remus squirms desperately in his grasp. He tries to conceal his stupid, entirely inconvenient arousal but his hips want to twist this way when Remus needs them to twist that way, and Sirius's hand dips into a pocket and--
"HA!" Sirius crows, retrieving a melted, sad-looking mess of chocolate from Remus's pocket. "TRIUMPH!"
And then he begins to lick the chocolate off his fingers.
Breathing heavily, Remus sags against the wall, staring at Sirius with a horrible mixture of desire and dismay. "We really, really have to get out of this room," he rasps.
Sirius just moans.
*****
An hour later and Sirius can still taste Remus on his fingers.
Sirius suckles the tip of his pinky, carefully licking at the whorls and loops where the remains of Remus's chocolate may have seeped in and hidden, tastes soot and dirt and sweat, but underneath that is the slow, sugary burn of Remus's faithful chocolate, and the taste of it is so good that Sirius hopes he never loses the flavor.
"You know," Sirius says almost conversationally, "I do think I might be losing my mind."
It is a very reasonable explanation. Really, makes a lot of sense once you think about it. It would explain why Sirius can't seem to stop licking his fingers in search of Moony-taste, or why his body seems to want to snuggle in closer to Remus even when his brain tells him he should be moving away. If there's a funny little surge of electricity that jolts through him whenever his thigh brushes against Remus's hip, then it must be caused by absolute and pure insanity. And if he's spent the last forty-five minutes with a cockstand that won't fucking quit, then it's because he's going batty, not because Remus's skin is warm and surprisingly soft whenever he manages to get his hands on naked patches of it.
But Remus just snorts, shuffles around a bit on the floor so that his foot is almost in Sirius's lap. "You're not losing your mind," he says obstinately, and Sirius frowns.
"How do you know? Since when are you an expert on crazy?"
"Since I became friends with you," Remus says coolly. "Which is why I know that you can't have lost your mind, as you never had one to begin with. If anything, this entire disaster is evidence of my insanity for ever having befriended you in the first place."
Further evidence that Sirius is going batty - that actually hurts. Pouting, Sirius tosses a glance in his friend's sulking direction. "You don't mean that."
Remus sighs, waves a hand. "Oh, of course I don't mean it," he says, and a strange geyser of relief erupts in Sirius's chest, like his entire world had threatened to cave in under the threat of Remus regretting him. "You know that you and Prongs and Peter are the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides, without you, I'd be certain to get clobbered on a regular basis."
He says it jokingly, but there's a dry, self-deprecating note to it that rings of truth and Sirius instantly feels his hackles rise. "Who'd clobber you, huh?" he demands. "Tell me and I'll box their ears in so hard they'll never hear another word again."
Even in the dark of the room, Sirius can see Remus's shoulders tense up, his long, lean lines contracting and sharpening underneath the smudges of shadows. "No one," he says thinly. "I can handle my own, I'll have you know."
"Never said you couldn't," Sirius says smoothly. "I just know you rather wouldn't."
"Well, yes."
"So tell me."
Remus narrows his eyes. "Why do you care?"
This is a very silly question, so Sirius thumps Remus lightly on the back of the neck. "Because you're Moony," he answers simply, as if that were the answer to everything. And maybe it is. No one else gets to tease Remus about his bookishness or poke fun at his chocolate stains, no one except Sirius. And even though Sirius himself never hits him (the occasional light thumping aside, which is good for Remus, really it is), no one else gets that privilege, either. In fact, no one else should even touch Moony, because-
Because he's mine.
That startles Sirius, the sudden ring of possessiveness that suddenly slides down over his heart and makes his chest feel tight and sore, like he's been kicked hard in vulnerable, soft places and now there's a permanent bruise that he's never noticed before. Never noticed a lot before tonight, like the way Remus seems so at home in the shadows, folded gently in their caress, or the little groove between his eyebrows that comes from too much thinking and gets deeper and more pronounced the longer Sirius stares.
"What?" Remus asks then, frowning. "What are you staring at? Is there something on my nose?"
As a matter of fact, a large dollop of soot has graced the tip of Remus's long, thin nose from the get-go, but Sirius has said nothing before and doesn't intend on saying anything now. Not when it's suddenly even cuter than it was earlier. Not when his thumb itches to swipe it away before Remus gets the chance to do so himself. "No," Sirius lies. "It's just … well, I'm bored. Got to look at something, don't I?"
Remus gives him a long, slightly dubious look that makes Sirius feel slightly embarrassed, like he's just been caught stealing dungbombs from Zonko's, before Remus sighs and reaches into one of his pockets. He digs around for a moment before procuring a spare scrap of parchment.
Curious, Sirius cocks his head and watches as Remus's careful, long fingers start folding the parchment into halves and quarters, his elegant fingertips flying and soaring over each delicate fold and angle, the motions so meticulous that it sort of mesmerizes Sirius. He finds that he can't look away from the smooth, almost seductive caress of Remus's slender fingertips. It's almost as though he can feel those skilled, smooth hands gliding across his own skin, all secretive and confessional, that intimate dance that only Remus's hands could ever perform so beautifully.
"Voila."
In his hands, Remus holds a small, delicate paper iris, its petals rough and scratchy, slightly torn at the edges, dotted with stray spots of ink. There's nothing clumsy in its construction, nothing childish or forced (as it undoubtedly would be if Sirius were to try the same trick). It looks flawless, effortless, perfect. It's the most beautiful thing Sirius has ever seen in his entire life. It came from Remus's hands.
"What the fucking hell is that?" Sirius blurts, and instantly hates his brain.
Remus frowns, looks suddenly self-conscious. "A flower," he says weakly. "I don't know, my dad taught me to do origami on the nights before the moon, when I got restless, to keep my hands busy and my mind off … things. I don't know. It's stupid."
He moves to snap the flower in half when Sirius hastily reaches out and snatches it away from him, grasping it safely in the clutch of his hand. When Remus arches an eyebrow at him, Sirius gives him a laugh that sounds a little off even to his own ears, but he can't think of anything to say. He just couldn't let Remus fuck up all his hard work, not when this is all so inexplicably strange in a Remus kind of way, and besides that, Sirius likes it.
So Sirius just juts out his chin with that old Black pride that he conjures up every now and then, and firmly tucks the flower in his hair.
Immediately, Remus bursts out laughing and it makes that heavy place in Sirius's stomach suddenly start flying, far beyond the reaches of this gloomy little cubbyhole, over and around the turrets and towers of Hogwarts, into the bloody stratosphere. All because Remus fucking Lupin is laughing so hard there are tears in the corners of his ridiculously gorgeous eyes.
"You prat," Remus wheezes, but his smile is so broad that it briefly illuminates their dank little closet, and Sirius thinks not for the first time that he is not going to survive this night intact.
*****
"All right," Remus sighs, hating himself all the while, "I admit. It was a very bad idea to look and see if Hogwarts had a boiler room."
Groaning, Sirius throws his head back against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut. "Moony, if I weren't so fucking hot, I'd do a victory dance."
It is, by the way, incredibly hot. The roaring furnaces are bleeding heat through the thick walls of the closet, making sweat dribble down the back of Remus's neck and soak into the collar of his shirt. They'd abandoned their school robes not long after they first found this place, and their socks and shoes are now tucked into the messy knots of heavy wool. Still, it isn't helping matters. The air down here is stale, dirty, thick and hot. Remus swears that he can see the heat rippling in the air between them.
Problem is, he's no longer certain what kind of heat is there.
It should not really come as a great surprise that Sirius is pretty when he sweats. Sirius is pretty all the time. It's what makes girls blush when they walk past him, what makes their more weak-willed professors so susceptible to his charms, but Remus always thought he was immune to it. Heterosexual male, brotherly friends, and all that rot. And rot is exactly what it is, because Remus can't seem to stop watching the sweat sluice down the strong arch of Sirius's nose until it rests in the groove of his upper lip, little beads of perspiration lining his curvy mouth, and that damned flower …
Warily, Remus stares at it, the little parchment petals wilting a little in the weight of Sirius's hair. It wouldn't be so bad if Sirius would just stop playing with it. If it were a joke, he'd leave it alone, just let it taunt Remus into giggling, but Sirius keeps fidgeting with the stem, stroking at the petals with his thumbs, like it's alive, like it can flourish. The depth of how much it pleases Remus to see Sirius wearing that dorky flower is discomfiting to say the least.
Groaning, Sirius shifts a little against the wall and tries to loosen his tie some more. "I feel like I can't breathe," he mutters. "You feel that?"
One slender, callused gold finger slides along the sweaty slope of Sirius's collarbone. Remus swallows. "Yeah," he says. "I think I feel that."
Sirius's fingers are now starting to dip down to the sweat-stained front of his shirt. Remus feels the dull beginnings of horror creeping up his spine. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sirius snaps, undoing the buttons on his dress shirt. "I'm getting comfortable, that's what I'm doing. I'm about to sweat my nuts off in here, so what's the problem?"
Remus doesn't know. It's not like he's never seen Sirius naked before. After all, Sirius has always had a deep love affair with public nudity, and with a body like his, Remus can't really blame him. But tonight, after feeling the texture and the heat of that body so intimately, while Sirius is wearing that dippy flower in his hair like it means more than just a joke to him … well, Remus just doesn't think he can take it. Not when the barest hint of Sirius's chest makes hummingbirds and rattlesnakes start shifting around in his stomach.
Damp linen wings swoop down suddenly on Remus's head, and he can smell saltwater taffy, soot, dog. Howling in dismay, Remus yanks the shirt off his head and glares at Sirius. "Not on! You stink of Quidditch locker rooms."
It's troublingly difficult to glower at Sirius when he's grinning like Pan and shirtless. "But it's a healthy smell, Moony!" he says joyfully. "The smell of growing boys and organized sports! You'd only be so lucky to smell this good."
"Indeed," Remus says, distastefully kicking the shirt into the corner with their robes as Sirius sits back down beside him. They're still scrunched up together, only now Sirius's naked, damp shoulder is pressing into Remus's shoulder, the sweat and heat bleeding through Remus's thin shirt in a way that oddly compels Remus to get closer instead of farther away. There are definitely two kinds of heat in this room, and one is infinitely more confusing than the other.
Sirius's fingers reach up and toy with the flower behind his ear, and Remus shifts uncomfortably and wishes it weren't so damn hard to breathe.
*****
For a little while, there's silence.
Uncomfortably, Sirius shifts his shoulders from side to side, flinching at the way his skin sticks to the metal. He's leaning against the door, his legs stretched out in front of him, with Remus's naked feet in his lap. On the other side of the closet, Sirius can just barely make out the splay of Remus's closed eyelashes, the slightly parted lips. He's pretending to sleep, one of his favorite little tricks, and Sirius lets him get away with it, mostly because he has his own uses for the quiet.
Cocking his head to the side, Sirius narrows his eyes and stares critically at his friend. He's been doing this for the last twenty minutes, and he still doesn't get it. It's not like Remus is the most attractive boy at Hogwarts. He's all tall and weedy-looking, underfed, impossibly slender. His nose is too long for his face, and he's always got that hangdog look on his face, like he's going to keel over at any given moment and no longer really cares. He's way too fond of books and actually likes being still, and he has chocolate stains on his robes and wears these awful sweaters that never go with the rest of his wardrobe and makes awful paper flowers with his hands.
So why the fuck can't Sirius stop thinking about him?
Well, there are some good things about Remus. Like his feet. He actually has kind of nice feet, upon closer examination. Sirius frowns at the foot in his lap, the way the toes are long and skinny like Remus's fingers, the ankle sharp and delicate. And his hands, yes, those are nice too. Clever. Thoughtful. Kind of stunning. Kind of. And his nose really isn't bad at all, not when Remus looks down it at him and says something surprisingly sly, and really, Sirius sort of likes his awful sweaters because they're always really soft and smell good, like sugary tea and the back room at Honeyduke's.
"Oh, God, we're doomed," Sirius groans, breaking the silence and kicking his feet in desperation at his horrible, awful predicament.
Remus snarls, shoves Sirius's foot away. "Get your foot out of my face, Black. It smells horrible."
"That's bollocks," Sirius says indignantly. "I'll have you know that Blacks don't have smelly feet. It's a genetic trait."
Wearily, Remus sighs and throws his head back against the wall. "Oh, for the love of Circe, does every conversation of ours have to disintegrate into an argument?"
That kind of hurts. Sirius frowns, feels guilty, shrugs a shoulder. "I don't know," he says. "I like arguing with you. You're much more creative and persistent than James. He resorts to violence much faster than you do."
And all that's true, but there's more to it than just that. There's something exhilarating in arguing with Remus, the rapid back-and-forth, the way Remus can wield his voice like a weapon and turn scathing and clever in the blink of an eye. The atmosphere around him crackles, feels electric, and Sirius can't help but provoke him. It's addictive. It's Moony.
It's absolutely insane.
"You're absolutely insane," Remus sighs, and Sirius blinks as the side of his mouth quirks up into an almost-shy smile. "Ah, well, I've put up with you for this long, haven't I."
Still giving him that odd little smile, Remus closes his eyes and shrinks down lower on the wall, the linen of his shirt making scratchy noises against the brick, arching his back as he stretches out his long limbs. Mouth gone slack, eyes closed, throat bent, arms lifting, torso twisting. A dark, rippling noise of pleasure simmers deep in Remus's throat, vibratory and sleek, and the sound of it is like a fist wrapped around Sirius's cock, stroking hot and heavy. The foot on Sirius's thigh stretches and the long toes curl. Sirius bites down hard on his lower lip and tastes blood.
"I'm very tired," Remus says softly, his voice faint like dandelion fluff.
Sirius nods dazedly. "Yeah. Right. Me too."
Remus's heel brushes the palm of Sirius's hand and somehow gets caught there, pressed up against the ball. Tentatively, Sirius wraps his hand around it, lets his fingers curl over the slender breadth of Remus's ankle, the tips ghosting over the wiry copper-gold hairs on his leg. Remus twitches briefly and Sirius readies his hasty apology, but then he relaxes, even pushes a little into his touch. Sirius drags his thumb down the high arch of his foot, feels the roughness of the calluses there, given to him by nights wandering the forests on wolf-pads and moonlight. Beneath his touch, Remus shivers, semi-sighs.
When the silence comes around again, Sirius still doesn't get it.
He thinks he's maybe stopped caring.
*****
Sirius Black is known for his very bad ideas. Notorious, even. Infamous. The professors speak of him in hushed, angry tones whenever he walks by them, and Professor McGonagall once privately begged Remus to do something about his friend Mr. Black before he drove her to an early grave. Over the years, Remus has kept a running list of the Top 5 Worst Ideas Sirius Black Has Ever Had:
5. Trying to install a Muggle lawnmower engine on his broomstick.
4. Eating every dessert in the kitchen before supper, including four raspberry chocolate cakes.
3. Licking a metal pole in the middle of winter just to prove Remus wrong.
2. Looking for explosives in the tiny closet in the boiler room at Hogwarts.
And, the new Number One Worst Idea of All Time:
1. Suggesting that Remus should spoon him on the floor of said tiny closet.
"No," Remus says quickly, so quickly that his voice almost jerks right out of pitch. "Not a chance. No. No way."
Groaning with exasperation, Sirius rolls his eyes and runs a hand through his shaggy hair. "Oh, come on, Moony," he whines. "It's not like it's that big a deal. Besides, like you said, we're going to be stuck in here 'til the house elves come, and that's at least for another six hours, and this is the only way either one of us is going to get any damn sleep."
Sleep? Remus wants to laugh at the idea. Not because he's not tired, no, he's bloody exhausted, but because he knows that there's absolutely no way he'll be able to sleep wrapped up around Sirius Black. Not tonight, not after his body's been crooning tender, mind-shattering fantasy songs about the sheen of Sirius's skin all night long. When Remus looks at his friend's bare chest, the flat, rosy nipples, the hard muscles of his stomach and that fine, sharp line of soft dark hairs descending from his belly button …
"No," Remus says again, and hopes his voice isn't wobbling as much as his heart is. "Staying up all night is much better, anyway. Isn't that what you're always saying? Sleep is the cousin of death, and all that rot?"
"Yes, I'm full of all sorts of bullshit, aren't I?" Sirius says cheerfully. Then suddenly, with the startling unpredictability that Sirius has always had way too much of, he switches from teasing to pleading, pouting up his lips, widening his eyes to puppyish proportions. "Aww, please, Moony. I'm sleepy, and you need your rest, and you know there's no other way to fit. Please?"
And it's funny, very strange, because there is a kind of desperation in Sirius's voice that Remus doesn't quite understand. Or maybe he does understand it, and that's why it makes the tremors in his stomach suddenly double and triple until Remus's knees feel so weak that he has no choice but to do as Sirius requested. "Fine," he mumbles, running a hand through his damp hair. "Just … fine."
Needless to say, it's awkward, lying down on the cold concrete, wincing gingerly when his hipbone pokes painfully at the hard floor and then scooting over and allowing Sirius to squeeze in next to him. There's a bit of wriggling involved as Sirius makes himself comfortable, his back turned to Remus all the while, and Remus almost jumps when Sirius picks up one of his arms and drapes it loosely around Sirius's narrow, naked waist. Finally content, Sirius sighs, and all is quiet.
It does not take Remus very long to find a flaw in Sirius's plan. There is absolutely no way that Remus is going to be able to sleep this way. It's not just the hard floor or the skyrocketing temperatures, no, Remus has learned how to sleep in the most terrible of conditions during his experience with the Shrieking Shack. No, this is all about Sirius, about the hard heat of his taut muscles clenching and unclenching under the palm of Remus's hand, about the tangled fall of his hair pressed close to Remus's nose so all he can smell is autumn and Padfoot. It's about the way that Remus's blood keeps rushing and rising, and oh, how he loathes the way that Sirius has his ass shoved right up against Remus's crotch. It's just begging for trouble, all of it.
"See?" says Sirius, patting Remus's hand reassuringly. "It's not so bad."
Remus giggles a bit madly and tastes his own sweat. "Right. Of course it's not."
"You're all hot and sticky."
So is Sirius. Hot like molten honey under his hands, up against his chest, pressed into him intimately. Remus shudders a little, tries not to press his nose into the nape of Sirius's neck. "Yeah," he says hoarsely. "Guess I kind of am."
Sirius's fingertips creep up and caress the cuff of Remus's sleeve, his thumb dipping in and stroking a little at his wrist. "Could always take this off."
There's an electric kind of energy surging that surges through him when he thinks about that, about shucking his clothes and his inhibitions, about being skin against skin and nothing more. Sucking in a deep breath, Remus subtly shifts his hips away from Sirius's rear end. "I'm fine," he says, and his voice is thin, reedy, the skip of a nervous record. "Really."
Sirius sighs, suddenly frustrated. "You always do that, you know."
"Do what?"
"Hide under all those baggy sweaters all the time. I mean, you can't be comfortable, Moony."
No, he's not comfortable. He's dying. Sweat sluices down the back of his neck, blossoms up across his chest and down the slope of his stomach, drips into his eyes and stings. He feels like his skin is on fire. Still, Remus grits his teeth, tries to hold onto whatever principles he has left. "I'm fine," he insists. "And anyway, you know why I always wear long sleeves, even in the summer."
The edges of fingernails rake gently over the fine threads of scar tissue etched into Remus's forearm. "I know," Sirius says a little sadly. "And I get that, I do. Too many questions. But this is just me, Remus. Just your old mate Padfoot, right? I've seen your scars before."
Oh, but Remus doesn't want to have this conversation right now, not tonight, not when he's so close to Sirius that he can't tell one heartbeat from the other, not when all he can breathe is the prickling saltiness of Sirius's skin. Not when Sirius's fingers are stroking so lightly at his wrist, edging the cuff up and away from Remus's wrist, and he can't believe this is actually happening.
But it is.
"You shouldn't be ashamed of them," Sirius says. "They're a part of who you are."
Closing his eyes tightly, Remus ducks his head, tries to slow down his body through sheer force of will. "I know," he whispers. "It's just … I don't like seeing them, either. They remind me of things."
Slashing, biting, gnarling, has to get free, has to get free, has to kill, the slice of broken skin, the spill of blood, and it doesn't matter where it comes from so long as the wolf gets its pound of flesh …
"Oh," Sirius breathes, and the sadness in his voice from earlier seems to multiply exponentially. "Oh, Moony. Maybe … maybe that's the problem, then." Those smart gold fingers are sweeping back and forth across Remus's pulse point, and he wonders if Sirius can detect the rapid beat of his terrified heart. "Maybe you just need some better memories for them."
The edge of Sirius's thumbnail slides under the button on his cuff, undoing it. Remus feels a little faint. "Sirius, what-"
"Shh," Sirius whispers, but his voice is shaky, too. "Just let me ..."
And then Sirius starts touching him in earnest, his fingertips trailing lighter than lace across the jagged lines and raised tissue, his ragged thumbnail dipping into the curve of a tooth mark on Remus's wrist, index finger tracing over places mauled by claws. So gentle, so frail, so slow, but the scars are sensitive in ways even Remus didn't know about until now, and they burn and twist under his touch. "Oh, God," Remus gasps, "oh, God, what the fuck are you doing to me? "
As usual, Sirius pays him no mind, not even when Remus starts whimpering into the crook of his neck. "You know, Moony, you're kind of beautiful," he says, running his fingers up and down the veins in Remus's hand.
"No I'm not," Remus whispers. "I'm too tall, and too skinny, and I wear horrible sweaters and my nose is too big for my face."
Sirius barks out a laugh. "Yeah. I know."
His fingers brush over the juncture of three pinkish-silver marks on Remus's forearm and Remus can't help it; his hips jerk forward and his painfully intense erection grinds desperately against Sirius's ass. A sharp, gut-wrenching noise twists out of Sirius's throat as he shudders, too, and God help him, but Remus wants him so bad that he doesn't think he's going to survive it. "Sirius," he gasps, "what on earth do you think you're--"
And then Sirius turns around and kisses the words right out of Remus's mouth.
*****
Sirius has absolutely no idea what he's doing.
If you want the honest truth, he thinks he's maybe gone insane. It would certainly explain a lot of things, like why he's currently curled up on the floor kissing Remus Lupin well into tomorrow, why his hands can't seem to stop touching his skin. There's only one problem with this very convenient hypothesis: Sirius has never felt more sane in his life.
It's just that it's so ... good. Better than good, better than brilliant, better than ice cream and Saturdays and sharp things and explosions, like all those things mixed together and kind of minty-chocolaty flavored. It's the most heady, wonderful thing ever and Sirius is never going to stop kissing Remus, not ever, and then Remus finally gives in and starts kissing him back and oh my God it's even better.
Helplessly, Sirius moans as Remus sucks sharply at his tongue, grazes his teeth across his lower lip, attacks and twists and puts his hands on Sirius's neck and makes the most incredible noises. All growling half-pleas, rumbling rough and rich against his chest, and when he finally has to breathe it's a terrible, dreadful thing, mostly because that's when Sirius starts talking.
"I'm sorry," he babbles, his fists bunched up in Remus's shirt, "I'm really, really sorry, it's just that you smell really good and you're driving me crazy today and I think you probably drive me crazy every day, and I know that this is really not on and you're probably going to hate me forever but I think I really want this. I really want you. Did I mention how good you smell?"
Remus stares at him for a moment, lips parted and breathing hard, so intimately pressed against Sirius that it takes everything in Sirius's power not to start thrusting his hips right then and there. When Remus flicks his tongue out and licks his lips, Sirius whimpers a little. "Sirius," Remus says very slowly, and here it comes, the crushing blow, the making of an awkward moment that will probably haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Sirius winces a little in anticipation of it. "Yeah?"
"Whatever happens next is all your fault."
And then Remus is kissing him again, kissing him thorough and slow and then short and fast like little bursts of fire, tiny matches tossed all over his body and who knew Moony was such a pyromaniac? Who knew Moony was anything like this, making hungry little rumbling noises as he clutches furiously at Sirius's shoulders? None of them, and he is such an idiot for having this right under his nose all these years and never figuring it out until now.
Their bodies are moving now, moving together in a strange sort of synchronicity that Sirius didn't even know existed. One of Sirius's thighs manages to wedge itself between Remus's legs, and the thrust of Remus's cock against his leg is making it hard for Sirius to breathe. Moaning, he jerks and thrashes against the agonizingly wonderful friction, his entire body flying out of control and he no longer cares. Consequences are for poncers, anyway.
So sod Remus's stupid shirt and who cares if Sirius breaks off all the buttons and makes them scatter and dance on the cement floor? Not Sirius, that's for damn sure. Not when there's suddenly all this skin exposed, Remus's strong, slightly freckled shoulders, the first sparse beginnings of coppery chest hair, the sinews and the scars. Oh, but Moony is a pretty thing indeed, much more beautiful than Sirius thought, and what makes it all is the slightly awestruck expression on Remus's face.
"We're really going to do this, aren't we?" he asks.
Sirius frowns, runs a hand across Remus's chest, his thumb pushing experimentally against one of Remus's pale pink nipples until it hardens, tightens, makes Remus sigh. "Oh, yeah," Sirius murmurs, licking his lips greedily. "We're definitely going to do this."
Swiftly, before Remus can start listening to his big annoying brain, Sirius ducks his head down and licks at the nipple, an experimental swipe of tongue against eager flesh. Gasping, Remus thrashes and arches his back, muttering swear words that Sirius taught him when they were ten, and isn't it funny how things come to pass? Grinning, Sirius takes the erect bud between his teeth and tugs a little, and then moans when Remus shoves him backwards until he's sprawled on the floor and Remus is on top of him.
More kissing, yes, Sirius will never get tired of that, of this new way their mouths can wage war, with tongue and teeth and the absence of words. Remus's hands are moving everywhere, those skinny fingers touching and caressing, making Sirius writhe and shimmy underneath him. When Remus's fingertips pinch at Sirius's own nipple, he suddenly understands why it drove Remus batty and Sirius moans and makes incoherent noises as he blindly rubs himself against whatever parts of Remus he can find. "Need you, need you, want you so bad," he begs. "Please, Moony, get these fucking things off-"'
Something is snatched from behind his ear, and Remus gives him a half-mad grin. "Not until you get rid of that silly flower."
Sirius laughs. It's all kind of clumsy, as Sirius has only done this twice before and then, it was with a girl and things were very different. There weren't any belts or trousers to undo, no fumbling with buckles and flies. Sirius thinks he likes this better, the intimate dance of anxious hands trying desperately to get into secret places, and when he finally wraps his hand around Remus's stiff cock, Remus jerks and stiffens, his teeth sinking down into his juicy lower lip. "Oh, hell," Remus gasps, "oh, bloody fucking hell …"
And then Remus's fingers find Sirius's erection and Sirius knows exactly what he means.
What happens next is sort of a blur, a messy mosaic of sensations and sweat, as their bodies start moving together, thrusting into each other, slick cock against slick cock, kisses upon kisses until Sirius's mouth forgets how to do anything but this. This, right here, this fucking or shagging or kissing or whatever anyone wants to call it, this is brilliant. This is ecstasy. This is Remus, his hands, his mouth, his voice, his sighs, and Sirius wants to live inside this moment forever, keep this feeling for the rest of his life, because it is simply that bloody good.
Oh, I love you, Moony, I love you, I love you, I love you-
Sirius has no idea who comes first, and really, it doesn't matter, because suddenly they're both twisting and moaning together, bucking hips, grabbing wildly at flesh and lips as wave after wave of pleasure spills over them. And when it's over, Sirius smiles and decides that the boiler room was worth it after all.
*****
A part of Remus has always wondered if one could shag Sirius into silence. It's very disappointing to be proven wrong.
"So the next time, we'll get ourselves a proper bed, with cushions and all that because I think I've got bruises all over my bum and besides, there's leverage possibilities, did you know that? And there's this thing I read about once in a magazine my mum had, this thing you can do with your prostate, and--"
Naked and dazed, Remus leans against the heavy steel door with a lapful of equally naked Sirius and watches with a sort of morbid fascination as his hand strokes through Sirius's hair seemingly of its own volition. It's not normal, this. It's just plain odd. His skin is sticky in unusual places, the room now has a muskier, saltier smell to it than it did before, and he keeps finding himself bewitched by the magic of Sirius's skin. It is quite possibly the single strangest night in Remus's entire life.
Even stranger, he can't remember the last time he felt this fucking good.
"...'Cause you should do that thing again, Moony, that thing you did with your hips right there at the end? Oh, that was fantastic. You have to show me how you did that so I can show you how it felt. And we're going to need things, like lube and stuff, and you're going to have to brush up on your silencing charms because you know I'm crap at them, and ..."
His skin keeps tingling in the most unusual places, places Remus never thought of as erotic, but now everything is kind of sensual. His knees, his ankles, the backs of his hands. One of Sirius's feet keeps rubbing against his shin and it's like a slow melting, a boneless state he's tried for years to find and never knew until now. Part of Remus thinks that's dangerous. Too much potential for addiction. Other parts of Remus know he's already hooked. Probably has been for years.
Suddenly, one of Sirius's big, annoying thumbs jabs Remus mercilessly in the thigh. Yelping, Remus swats away the offending hand. "Ouch, Padfoot, that hurt."
And once again Remus is forced to bear witness to Sirius's mercurial mood swings. Annoyance is written all over Sirius's face, and there are telltale signs of a good sulk coming on. "I know what you're thinking, you know," he says accusatorially.
Remus arches an eyebrow dryly, frowns as he encounters a snag in Sirius's hair. "Really. Do tell."
"You're thinking that this is all a big mistake. You're thinking that I'm a total maniac who's made you do terrible things like have orgasms, and you're going to pretend that none of this ever happened. You're thinking that you're a prefect and a werewolf and you don't like boys and all sorts of other rot that isn't anywhere close to true. You're thinking that I'm going to use you and betray you but I won't, Moony, I just won't, because I really do love--"
Remus kisses him then, hard and possessive and exasperated, kisses him sound and thorough until Sirius forgets whatever sort of crap he's spouting off and starts kissing him back. When Remus finally pulls away, he takes a certain smug satisfaction in the wide-eyed way Sirius looks at him, like he's the entire bloody universe. Remus grins. Now this, he could get accustomed to.
"Actually," he says with a smirk, "I was thinking that we still have a good four hours before the house elves get here."
And this time, Remus happily takes the blame.
TITLE: Boiling Point
AUTHOR: anniesj
SUMMARY: Six hours stuck in a closet with someone you love -- it's the best kind of hell imaginable.
RATING: NC-17
WORDS: 8,415 (dude, I KNOW. *gawks*)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: For the rsficathon, written for adrianaslyth, who requested MWPP-era and minimal angst. Again, THERE IS NO ANGST HERE. This is a huge thing for me. Be proud. :)
"This is all your fault, you know."
See, this is how all of their arguments start: the assignment of blame from one party to the other, usually (and in this case) Remus piling it all on Sirius's poor, over-burdened shoulders with that cool, even voice of his. It's not fair. Sirius always gets blamed for these fiascos. He thinks it has something to do with his reputation.
Sirius scowls, swats angrily at his dirty, messed-up hair. "Bugger that, it wasn't my idea to see if Hogwarts had a fucking boiler room."
Remus purses his lips and cocks an eyebrow. "Well, you were the one who insisted that a boiler room couldn't possibly exist, and now you've been proven wrong, haven't you?"
Hogwarts does indeed have a boiler room. A very large, very dirty, very hot boiler room that exists somewhere underneath the castle, full of furnaces that radiate heat, with enchanted shovels that continuously feed coal into the burners. It also has a very small, very cramped broom closet near the back, and that broom closet just so happens to have a ridiculously indestructible steel door on it.
Naturally, this is where Remus and Sirius are now stuck.
It's a tiny rectangle of a room, full of dirty rags and an awful dead-rat smell, and the two of them are cramped up on the floor next to each other like bloody sardines in one of Peter's foul-smelling tins. Snarling, Sirius kicks angrily at the door again. "Well, it's definitely your fault for insisting that if there was a boiler room, it had to be included on the bloody Map. Ha! Like anyone would ever have reason to visit this pit."
Behind him, Remus shifts irritably, and one of his knobby knees jabs Sirius in the rib and makes him howl. "Oh, shut up," Remus hisses. "It was for the sake of completion. Honestly, do you want a comprehensive map of Hogwarts or do you want a shoddy knock-off you could buy at Zonko's? And besides that, it was your half-brained notion that there might be explosives in this room that led to us even looking in here, and how you ever managed to lose our wands between here and there I'll never understand."
"Well, there's fire down here," Sirius says defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. "You know how much I like fire, Moony. It's pretty and it eats things. Like clothes, or frogs, or Snape's homework."
Remus groans, shifts, and the knee stabs Sirius again mercilessly. "That was intentional," Sirius grumbles.
"Oh, just shove it, Black," Remus says, and does it again.
*****
There are a thousand other places on this earth where Remus would like to be right now. His bed in Gryffindor Tower tops the list, yes, with its velvety drapes that always smell warm like tea instead of moth-eaten and dusty like his bedclothes back home. Or the library would be nice, especially if it was empty, where the other boys couldn't find him away from his friends and bother him about his clothes all afternoon when he was simply trying to read.
Of course, Antarctica would also be preferable to this.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Wincing, Remus opens his eyes and sees Sirius leaning heavily against him, kicking his feet as hard as he can against the door. Each kick does nothing but force another dull steel groan into the room, and it's beginning to make Remus's headache into something lethal. The room is dark, cramped, full of things that smell thick and damaged. Burned cloths. Gasoline. Rat droppings. A faint red light peeps under the door and makes everything look like fire. Remus is beginning to sweat.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
"HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!" Sirius screams right against Remus's ear, slamming his feet over and over again into the door. "SOMEONE HELP US! WE'RE IN FUCKING DISTRESS DOWN HERE!"
Something crucial and sharp twists in Remus's brain and his head screams in time with Sirius's obscenity-laced pleas for help, and then Remus screams, too, shoving his hands against his friend's shoulders to make him stop. "Oh, for the love of God, Sirius, no one's going to hear you!" he shouts. "We're stuck, all right? It's just after midnight, the house elves have all turned in, and if we're lucky, they'll come down and check on the furnaces in the morning. But until then, we're buggered. Royally, utterly buggered. So just. Shut. UP!"
Suddenly, Remus realizes that he's shaking Sirius by his shoulders, and he startles, releases him. Sirius frowns at him. You all right there, Moony?"
"I'm fine," Remus snaps, glaring at him and feeling terrible all at the same time. "I just have a headache, and you beating incessantly and uselessly on that door isn't helping matters in the least."
Amazing, how Sirius can turn from full-fledged pain in the ass to kicked puppy in the blink of an eye. His lips pout, and he looks down at the floor. "Sorry."
Remus says nothing. He just closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on something other than this fetid-smelling room, the burn of chemicals, the pressure of the walls, the excruciating build of the heat. He finds it odd when the thing he hones in on happens to be the pretty way the light darts through the shadowy thick of Sirius's hair.
"Moony?"
Remus blinks. "Yes, Sirius?"
His eyes are wide, begging things. "Are you going to be mad at me all night?"
He hates that he does this. He hates that Sirius always has to ask, always has to use that terrible need-me voice that makes some inexplicable part of Remus tumble and cave, even when Remus wants nothing more than to just wash his hands with him and be done with it. But then Sirius will look up at him with those pitiful blue-slate eyes and make his voice soft and fragile ...
Remus sighs, feels himself melt. "Well, since I don't fancy arguing with you for the next seven hours, I guess not."
When Sirius grins and kisses him on the top of his nose, Remus feels himself turn pink and is briefly glad that the dark is there to conceal it.
*****
It takes approximately forty-five minutes before Sirius's stomach starts growling and he starts thinking about food. Muffins and pumpkin pasties, chocolate frogs, thick meaty stews, stuffed quail ...
Remus frowns. "Stop that."
Another churn of his belly, and Sirius scowls, shifts around. "How do you even hear that?"
More body shifting; neither one of them can really get comfortable stuffed down in the dark, jammed into this horrible cube (where, by the way, there were sadly no explosives to be found). They keep changing positions, but Remus has gone through a growth spurt in the last month and his long, lanky bones won't fold up the way they used to. It's also made his robes and sleeves a tad too short, exposing his wrists whenever he writes. It's kind of adorable.
Currently, Sirius has his back to the wall and Remus is pressed up against his waist, arms wrapped around his legs, chin on his practically lethal-sharp knees. "Can feel it," Remus says, wriggling a bit against Sirius's stomach, making it growl again. "See? So stop it. You're not helping my headache."
Irritably, Remus gives one last thrash against Sirius's chest, accidentally brushing the front of Sirius's pants in the process. A spark of warmth flutters inexplicably, and Sirius blinks, startled. The air is suddenly getting thicker. The air's not the only thing getting thicker. Awkwardly, Sirius shifts in his seat, feels dry-mouthed, strange. He wonders if he's going to die down here.
"I wonder if we're going to die down here," he says, and Remus sighs, relaxes a little.
"We're not going to die down here," he says. It's not a reassuring nugget of bullshit, thankfully; Remus's matter-of-fact clipped tones make no mistakes. "Like I said, the house elves will have to come down here in the morning to check on the burners. Save your energy so you can bang against that door when they get here."
"But you don't know that the house elves will come," Sirius argues. "After all, you said it yourself -- all the shovels are charmed to perform their own tasks without anyone watching them."
"All magic has to be checked up on," Remus says. "For heaven's sake, don't you ever pay attention in class? Magic isn't something that you can just unleash into the wild. You have to keep tags on it, don't you, make sure that it hasn't mucked itself up without you there keeping an eye on it." Remus elbows Sirius gently in the ribs. "Kind of like you."
Sirius makes a face and sulks back into the thick cement wall. "Do you always have to be so goddamn logical, Moony? Makes it hard to carry on a conversation, you know. It's just a hypothetical. A conversation-maker. You know. Something to pass the time and keep our minds off how damn hungry we both are?"
Remus frowns. "I really am hungry."
Groaning, Sirius leans back and gives up. Remus is obviously not made for human conversation, not when he's always so methodical and factual and uses that aren't-I-clever voice all the time like it's some kind of punctuation. No, Remus is much more tolerable when he's quiet, the weight of his head resting on Sirius's chest, mussed copper-gold strands right under Sirius's nose. When he inhales Remus, he can smell paper and ink and the faintest trace of chocolate, and it makes that funny, rosy feeling gather and contract low in his belly. His stomach growls.
An annoyed noise whines in Remus's throat and he wriggles again. "Sirius, I told you to stop that." The bumps of Remus's spine suddenly slide against the length of Sirius's cock and he feels it jerk, strong and urgent, ridiculously hot. Sirius freezes, eyes wide, but Remus just makes another dissatisfied noise and shifts away without even noticing. "Stupid hungry bastard."
For once, Sirius doesn't argue.
*****
Ever since Remus found a book on Muggle psychology in his father's study last summer, he's become sort of obsessed with psychoanalyzing people. His friends, his family, his fellow students, his professors ... he supposes it's natural, and while he certainly doesn't put any real weight on any of his analyses (Remus is very well aware of just how fucked up he himself is, thank you very much), he can't help but imagine. Little experiments here and there. Thoughts and ponderings. And yes, on more than one occasion, Remus has wondered what would happen if you locked Sirius Black in a little room for an extended period of time, but honestly, hasn't everybody?
But he definitely never imagined himself stuck in the room with him. That was absolutely not part of the deal.
Sirius is singing. Slapping his knee in a sloppy kind of rhythm that sadly suggests that Sirius Black will never be much of a dancer and singing in a horrible, off-key voice that makes Remus's bone marrow curdle and wail.
"I'm stuck in a room with Mooooony
If I don't eat soon, I'll go looooony
I'd eat him except for he's so puuuuuny
Nothing else rhymes with that word ..."
Remus hits him. It's very satisfying to hit Sirius, mostly because Sirius never hits back (well, almost never, but it's rare and Sirius always swears it's for his own good). He supposes that a part of him should be annoyed with the way Sirius sometimes treats him like he's made out of glass, but a greater part of him likes it, just because he's the only thing Sirius treats with any sort of care.
Plus, this way, Sirius can be easily manipulated and controlled. "Knock it off," Remus snaps. "You're tone deaf and it's making my soul cry."
"I thought music was supposed to make your soul cry," Sirius points out. "At least, that's what you always say when you try to get me to listen to opera."
"That's a different kind of crying."
Moaning in his most theatrical way possible, Sirius topples over on his side and buries his face in Remus's neck. "Oh, come on, Moony, I'm fucking going out of my mind," he wails. "You've got to give me something to eat. I'm so hungry, and ... wait ..."
Miniscule, short puffs of breath suddenly dance across the sensitive juncture of Remus's neck and shoulder, like tiny hummingbird kisses lighting over his skin. His heartbeat doubles; his palms start sweating. Remus swallows hard as Sirius sniffs intently at his neck. "What the bloody hell are you doing?" he manages.
Sirius follows his nose upward, to the curve of Remus's jaw. "That's not what I think I smell, is it ... no, you wouldn't ..."
The very tip of Sirius's nose brushes Remus's earlobe and it sings, it cries, it croons the sweetest aria ever written, and Remus goes suddenly excruciatingly hard. "Sirius--"
One deep, dark breath and it takes everything in Remus not to buck his hips before Sirius pulls back and snarls at him hungrily.
"Chocolate."
Before Remus can react, Sirius pounces on top of him, his hands scrambling desperately through the folds of Remus's heavy robes. His hands are everywhere, fierce little daggers jabbing left and right, and Remus squirms desperately in his grasp. He tries to conceal his stupid, entirely inconvenient arousal but his hips want to twist this way when Remus needs them to twist that way, and Sirius's hand dips into a pocket and--
"HA!" Sirius crows, retrieving a melted, sad-looking mess of chocolate from Remus's pocket. "TRIUMPH!"
And then he begins to lick the chocolate off his fingers.
Breathing heavily, Remus sags against the wall, staring at Sirius with a horrible mixture of desire and dismay. "We really, really have to get out of this room," he rasps.
Sirius just moans.
*****
An hour later and Sirius can still taste Remus on his fingers.
Sirius suckles the tip of his pinky, carefully licking at the whorls and loops where the remains of Remus's chocolate may have seeped in and hidden, tastes soot and dirt and sweat, but underneath that is the slow, sugary burn of Remus's faithful chocolate, and the taste of it is so good that Sirius hopes he never loses the flavor.
"You know," Sirius says almost conversationally, "I do think I might be losing my mind."
It is a very reasonable explanation. Really, makes a lot of sense once you think about it. It would explain why Sirius can't seem to stop licking his fingers in search of Moony-taste, or why his body seems to want to snuggle in closer to Remus even when his brain tells him he should be moving away. If there's a funny little surge of electricity that jolts through him whenever his thigh brushes against Remus's hip, then it must be caused by absolute and pure insanity. And if he's spent the last forty-five minutes with a cockstand that won't fucking quit, then it's because he's going batty, not because Remus's skin is warm and surprisingly soft whenever he manages to get his hands on naked patches of it.
But Remus just snorts, shuffles around a bit on the floor so that his foot is almost in Sirius's lap. "You're not losing your mind," he says obstinately, and Sirius frowns.
"How do you know? Since when are you an expert on crazy?"
"Since I became friends with you," Remus says coolly. "Which is why I know that you can't have lost your mind, as you never had one to begin with. If anything, this entire disaster is evidence of my insanity for ever having befriended you in the first place."
Further evidence that Sirius is going batty - that actually hurts. Pouting, Sirius tosses a glance in his friend's sulking direction. "You don't mean that."
Remus sighs, waves a hand. "Oh, of course I don't mean it," he says, and a strange geyser of relief erupts in Sirius's chest, like his entire world had threatened to cave in under the threat of Remus regretting him. "You know that you and Prongs and Peter are the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides, without you, I'd be certain to get clobbered on a regular basis."
He says it jokingly, but there's a dry, self-deprecating note to it that rings of truth and Sirius instantly feels his hackles rise. "Who'd clobber you, huh?" he demands. "Tell me and I'll box their ears in so hard they'll never hear another word again."
Even in the dark of the room, Sirius can see Remus's shoulders tense up, his long, lean lines contracting and sharpening underneath the smudges of shadows. "No one," he says thinly. "I can handle my own, I'll have you know."
"Never said you couldn't," Sirius says smoothly. "I just know you rather wouldn't."
"Well, yes."
"So tell me."
Remus narrows his eyes. "Why do you care?"
This is a very silly question, so Sirius thumps Remus lightly on the back of the neck. "Because you're Moony," he answers simply, as if that were the answer to everything. And maybe it is. No one else gets to tease Remus about his bookishness or poke fun at his chocolate stains, no one except Sirius. And even though Sirius himself never hits him (the occasional light thumping aside, which is good for Remus, really it is), no one else gets that privilege, either. In fact, no one else should even touch Moony, because-
Because he's mine.
That startles Sirius, the sudden ring of possessiveness that suddenly slides down over his heart and makes his chest feel tight and sore, like he's been kicked hard in vulnerable, soft places and now there's a permanent bruise that he's never noticed before. Never noticed a lot before tonight, like the way Remus seems so at home in the shadows, folded gently in their caress, or the little groove between his eyebrows that comes from too much thinking and gets deeper and more pronounced the longer Sirius stares.
"What?" Remus asks then, frowning. "What are you staring at? Is there something on my nose?"
As a matter of fact, a large dollop of soot has graced the tip of Remus's long, thin nose from the get-go, but Sirius has said nothing before and doesn't intend on saying anything now. Not when it's suddenly even cuter than it was earlier. Not when his thumb itches to swipe it away before Remus gets the chance to do so himself. "No," Sirius lies. "It's just … well, I'm bored. Got to look at something, don't I?"
Remus gives him a long, slightly dubious look that makes Sirius feel slightly embarrassed, like he's just been caught stealing dungbombs from Zonko's, before Remus sighs and reaches into one of his pockets. He digs around for a moment before procuring a spare scrap of parchment.
Curious, Sirius cocks his head and watches as Remus's careful, long fingers start folding the parchment into halves and quarters, his elegant fingertips flying and soaring over each delicate fold and angle, the motions so meticulous that it sort of mesmerizes Sirius. He finds that he can't look away from the smooth, almost seductive caress of Remus's slender fingertips. It's almost as though he can feel those skilled, smooth hands gliding across his own skin, all secretive and confessional, that intimate dance that only Remus's hands could ever perform so beautifully.
"Voila."
In his hands, Remus holds a small, delicate paper iris, its petals rough and scratchy, slightly torn at the edges, dotted with stray spots of ink. There's nothing clumsy in its construction, nothing childish or forced (as it undoubtedly would be if Sirius were to try the same trick). It looks flawless, effortless, perfect. It's the most beautiful thing Sirius has ever seen in his entire life. It came from Remus's hands.
"What the fucking hell is that?" Sirius blurts, and instantly hates his brain.
Remus frowns, looks suddenly self-conscious. "A flower," he says weakly. "I don't know, my dad taught me to do origami on the nights before the moon, when I got restless, to keep my hands busy and my mind off … things. I don't know. It's stupid."
He moves to snap the flower in half when Sirius hastily reaches out and snatches it away from him, grasping it safely in the clutch of his hand. When Remus arches an eyebrow at him, Sirius gives him a laugh that sounds a little off even to his own ears, but he can't think of anything to say. He just couldn't let Remus fuck up all his hard work, not when this is all so inexplicably strange in a Remus kind of way, and besides that, Sirius likes it.
So Sirius just juts out his chin with that old Black pride that he conjures up every now and then, and firmly tucks the flower in his hair.
Immediately, Remus bursts out laughing and it makes that heavy place in Sirius's stomach suddenly start flying, far beyond the reaches of this gloomy little cubbyhole, over and around the turrets and towers of Hogwarts, into the bloody stratosphere. All because Remus fucking Lupin is laughing so hard there are tears in the corners of his ridiculously gorgeous eyes.
"You prat," Remus wheezes, but his smile is so broad that it briefly illuminates their dank little closet, and Sirius thinks not for the first time that he is not going to survive this night intact.
*****
"All right," Remus sighs, hating himself all the while, "I admit. It was a very bad idea to look and see if Hogwarts had a boiler room."
Groaning, Sirius throws his head back against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut. "Moony, if I weren't so fucking hot, I'd do a victory dance."
It is, by the way, incredibly hot. The roaring furnaces are bleeding heat through the thick walls of the closet, making sweat dribble down the back of Remus's neck and soak into the collar of his shirt. They'd abandoned their school robes not long after they first found this place, and their socks and shoes are now tucked into the messy knots of heavy wool. Still, it isn't helping matters. The air down here is stale, dirty, thick and hot. Remus swears that he can see the heat rippling in the air between them.
Problem is, he's no longer certain what kind of heat is there.
It should not really come as a great surprise that Sirius is pretty when he sweats. Sirius is pretty all the time. It's what makes girls blush when they walk past him, what makes their more weak-willed professors so susceptible to his charms, but Remus always thought he was immune to it. Heterosexual male, brotherly friends, and all that rot. And rot is exactly what it is, because Remus can't seem to stop watching the sweat sluice down the strong arch of Sirius's nose until it rests in the groove of his upper lip, little beads of perspiration lining his curvy mouth, and that damned flower …
Warily, Remus stares at it, the little parchment petals wilting a little in the weight of Sirius's hair. It wouldn't be so bad if Sirius would just stop playing with it. If it were a joke, he'd leave it alone, just let it taunt Remus into giggling, but Sirius keeps fidgeting with the stem, stroking at the petals with his thumbs, like it's alive, like it can flourish. The depth of how much it pleases Remus to see Sirius wearing that dorky flower is discomfiting to say the least.
Groaning, Sirius shifts a little against the wall and tries to loosen his tie some more. "I feel like I can't breathe," he mutters. "You feel that?"
One slender, callused gold finger slides along the sweaty slope of Sirius's collarbone. Remus swallows. "Yeah," he says. "I think I feel that."
Sirius's fingers are now starting to dip down to the sweat-stained front of his shirt. Remus feels the dull beginnings of horror creeping up his spine. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sirius snaps, undoing the buttons on his dress shirt. "I'm getting comfortable, that's what I'm doing. I'm about to sweat my nuts off in here, so what's the problem?"
Remus doesn't know. It's not like he's never seen Sirius naked before. After all, Sirius has always had a deep love affair with public nudity, and with a body like his, Remus can't really blame him. But tonight, after feeling the texture and the heat of that body so intimately, while Sirius is wearing that dippy flower in his hair like it means more than just a joke to him … well, Remus just doesn't think he can take it. Not when the barest hint of Sirius's chest makes hummingbirds and rattlesnakes start shifting around in his stomach.
Damp linen wings swoop down suddenly on Remus's head, and he can smell saltwater taffy, soot, dog. Howling in dismay, Remus yanks the shirt off his head and glares at Sirius. "Not on! You stink of Quidditch locker rooms."
It's troublingly difficult to glower at Sirius when he's grinning like Pan and shirtless. "But it's a healthy smell, Moony!" he says joyfully. "The smell of growing boys and organized sports! You'd only be so lucky to smell this good."
"Indeed," Remus says, distastefully kicking the shirt into the corner with their robes as Sirius sits back down beside him. They're still scrunched up together, only now Sirius's naked, damp shoulder is pressing into Remus's shoulder, the sweat and heat bleeding through Remus's thin shirt in a way that oddly compels Remus to get closer instead of farther away. There are definitely two kinds of heat in this room, and one is infinitely more confusing than the other.
Sirius's fingers reach up and toy with the flower behind his ear, and Remus shifts uncomfortably and wishes it weren't so damn hard to breathe.
*****
For a little while, there's silence.
Uncomfortably, Sirius shifts his shoulders from side to side, flinching at the way his skin sticks to the metal. He's leaning against the door, his legs stretched out in front of him, with Remus's naked feet in his lap. On the other side of the closet, Sirius can just barely make out the splay of Remus's closed eyelashes, the slightly parted lips. He's pretending to sleep, one of his favorite little tricks, and Sirius lets him get away with it, mostly because he has his own uses for the quiet.
Cocking his head to the side, Sirius narrows his eyes and stares critically at his friend. He's been doing this for the last twenty minutes, and he still doesn't get it. It's not like Remus is the most attractive boy at Hogwarts. He's all tall and weedy-looking, underfed, impossibly slender. His nose is too long for his face, and he's always got that hangdog look on his face, like he's going to keel over at any given moment and no longer really cares. He's way too fond of books and actually likes being still, and he has chocolate stains on his robes and wears these awful sweaters that never go with the rest of his wardrobe and makes awful paper flowers with his hands.
So why the fuck can't Sirius stop thinking about him?
Well, there are some good things about Remus. Like his feet. He actually has kind of nice feet, upon closer examination. Sirius frowns at the foot in his lap, the way the toes are long and skinny like Remus's fingers, the ankle sharp and delicate. And his hands, yes, those are nice too. Clever. Thoughtful. Kind of stunning. Kind of. And his nose really isn't bad at all, not when Remus looks down it at him and says something surprisingly sly, and really, Sirius sort of likes his awful sweaters because they're always really soft and smell good, like sugary tea and the back room at Honeyduke's.
"Oh, God, we're doomed," Sirius groans, breaking the silence and kicking his feet in desperation at his horrible, awful predicament.
Remus snarls, shoves Sirius's foot away. "Get your foot out of my face, Black. It smells horrible."
"That's bollocks," Sirius says indignantly. "I'll have you know that Blacks don't have smelly feet. It's a genetic trait."
Wearily, Remus sighs and throws his head back against the wall. "Oh, for the love of Circe, does every conversation of ours have to disintegrate into an argument?"
That kind of hurts. Sirius frowns, feels guilty, shrugs a shoulder. "I don't know," he says. "I like arguing with you. You're much more creative and persistent than James. He resorts to violence much faster than you do."
And all that's true, but there's more to it than just that. There's something exhilarating in arguing with Remus, the rapid back-and-forth, the way Remus can wield his voice like a weapon and turn scathing and clever in the blink of an eye. The atmosphere around him crackles, feels electric, and Sirius can't help but provoke him. It's addictive. It's Moony.
It's absolutely insane.
"You're absolutely insane," Remus sighs, and Sirius blinks as the side of his mouth quirks up into an almost-shy smile. "Ah, well, I've put up with you for this long, haven't I."
Still giving him that odd little smile, Remus closes his eyes and shrinks down lower on the wall, the linen of his shirt making scratchy noises against the brick, arching his back as he stretches out his long limbs. Mouth gone slack, eyes closed, throat bent, arms lifting, torso twisting. A dark, rippling noise of pleasure simmers deep in Remus's throat, vibratory and sleek, and the sound of it is like a fist wrapped around Sirius's cock, stroking hot and heavy. The foot on Sirius's thigh stretches and the long toes curl. Sirius bites down hard on his lower lip and tastes blood.
"I'm very tired," Remus says softly, his voice faint like dandelion fluff.
Sirius nods dazedly. "Yeah. Right. Me too."
Remus's heel brushes the palm of Sirius's hand and somehow gets caught there, pressed up against the ball. Tentatively, Sirius wraps his hand around it, lets his fingers curl over the slender breadth of Remus's ankle, the tips ghosting over the wiry copper-gold hairs on his leg. Remus twitches briefly and Sirius readies his hasty apology, but then he relaxes, even pushes a little into his touch. Sirius drags his thumb down the high arch of his foot, feels the roughness of the calluses there, given to him by nights wandering the forests on wolf-pads and moonlight. Beneath his touch, Remus shivers, semi-sighs.
When the silence comes around again, Sirius still doesn't get it.
He thinks he's maybe stopped caring.
*****
Sirius Black is known for his very bad ideas. Notorious, even. Infamous. The professors speak of him in hushed, angry tones whenever he walks by them, and Professor McGonagall once privately begged Remus to do something about his friend Mr. Black before he drove her to an early grave. Over the years, Remus has kept a running list of the Top 5 Worst Ideas Sirius Black Has Ever Had:
5. Trying to install a Muggle lawnmower engine on his broomstick.
4. Eating every dessert in the kitchen before supper, including four raspberry chocolate cakes.
3. Licking a metal pole in the middle of winter just to prove Remus wrong.
2. Looking for explosives in the tiny closet in the boiler room at Hogwarts.
And, the new Number One Worst Idea of All Time:
1. Suggesting that Remus should spoon him on the floor of said tiny closet.
"No," Remus says quickly, so quickly that his voice almost jerks right out of pitch. "Not a chance. No. No way."
Groaning with exasperation, Sirius rolls his eyes and runs a hand through his shaggy hair. "Oh, come on, Moony," he whines. "It's not like it's that big a deal. Besides, like you said, we're going to be stuck in here 'til the house elves come, and that's at least for another six hours, and this is the only way either one of us is going to get any damn sleep."
Sleep? Remus wants to laugh at the idea. Not because he's not tired, no, he's bloody exhausted, but because he knows that there's absolutely no way he'll be able to sleep wrapped up around Sirius Black. Not tonight, not after his body's been crooning tender, mind-shattering fantasy songs about the sheen of Sirius's skin all night long. When Remus looks at his friend's bare chest, the flat, rosy nipples, the hard muscles of his stomach and that fine, sharp line of soft dark hairs descending from his belly button …
"No," Remus says again, and hopes his voice isn't wobbling as much as his heart is. "Staying up all night is much better, anyway. Isn't that what you're always saying? Sleep is the cousin of death, and all that rot?"
"Yes, I'm full of all sorts of bullshit, aren't I?" Sirius says cheerfully. Then suddenly, with the startling unpredictability that Sirius has always had way too much of, he switches from teasing to pleading, pouting up his lips, widening his eyes to puppyish proportions. "Aww, please, Moony. I'm sleepy, and you need your rest, and you know there's no other way to fit. Please?"
And it's funny, very strange, because there is a kind of desperation in Sirius's voice that Remus doesn't quite understand. Or maybe he does understand it, and that's why it makes the tremors in his stomach suddenly double and triple until Remus's knees feel so weak that he has no choice but to do as Sirius requested. "Fine," he mumbles, running a hand through his damp hair. "Just … fine."
Needless to say, it's awkward, lying down on the cold concrete, wincing gingerly when his hipbone pokes painfully at the hard floor and then scooting over and allowing Sirius to squeeze in next to him. There's a bit of wriggling involved as Sirius makes himself comfortable, his back turned to Remus all the while, and Remus almost jumps when Sirius picks up one of his arms and drapes it loosely around Sirius's narrow, naked waist. Finally content, Sirius sighs, and all is quiet.
It does not take Remus very long to find a flaw in Sirius's plan. There is absolutely no way that Remus is going to be able to sleep this way. It's not just the hard floor or the skyrocketing temperatures, no, Remus has learned how to sleep in the most terrible of conditions during his experience with the Shrieking Shack. No, this is all about Sirius, about the hard heat of his taut muscles clenching and unclenching under the palm of Remus's hand, about the tangled fall of his hair pressed close to Remus's nose so all he can smell is autumn and Padfoot. It's about the way that Remus's blood keeps rushing and rising, and oh, how he loathes the way that Sirius has his ass shoved right up against Remus's crotch. It's just begging for trouble, all of it.
"See?" says Sirius, patting Remus's hand reassuringly. "It's not so bad."
Remus giggles a bit madly and tastes his own sweat. "Right. Of course it's not."
"You're all hot and sticky."
So is Sirius. Hot like molten honey under his hands, up against his chest, pressed into him intimately. Remus shudders a little, tries not to press his nose into the nape of Sirius's neck. "Yeah," he says hoarsely. "Guess I kind of am."
Sirius's fingertips creep up and caress the cuff of Remus's sleeve, his thumb dipping in and stroking a little at his wrist. "Could always take this off."
There's an electric kind of energy surging that surges through him when he thinks about that, about shucking his clothes and his inhibitions, about being skin against skin and nothing more. Sucking in a deep breath, Remus subtly shifts his hips away from Sirius's rear end. "I'm fine," he says, and his voice is thin, reedy, the skip of a nervous record. "Really."
Sirius sighs, suddenly frustrated. "You always do that, you know."
"Do what?"
"Hide under all those baggy sweaters all the time. I mean, you can't be comfortable, Moony."
No, he's not comfortable. He's dying. Sweat sluices down the back of his neck, blossoms up across his chest and down the slope of his stomach, drips into his eyes and stings. He feels like his skin is on fire. Still, Remus grits his teeth, tries to hold onto whatever principles he has left. "I'm fine," he insists. "And anyway, you know why I always wear long sleeves, even in the summer."
The edges of fingernails rake gently over the fine threads of scar tissue etched into Remus's forearm. "I know," Sirius says a little sadly. "And I get that, I do. Too many questions. But this is just me, Remus. Just your old mate Padfoot, right? I've seen your scars before."
Oh, but Remus doesn't want to have this conversation right now, not tonight, not when he's so close to Sirius that he can't tell one heartbeat from the other, not when all he can breathe is the prickling saltiness of Sirius's skin. Not when Sirius's fingers are stroking so lightly at his wrist, edging the cuff up and away from Remus's wrist, and he can't believe this is actually happening.
But it is.
"You shouldn't be ashamed of them," Sirius says. "They're a part of who you are."
Closing his eyes tightly, Remus ducks his head, tries to slow down his body through sheer force of will. "I know," he whispers. "It's just … I don't like seeing them, either. They remind me of things."
Slashing, biting, gnarling, has to get free, has to get free, has to kill, the slice of broken skin, the spill of blood, and it doesn't matter where it comes from so long as the wolf gets its pound of flesh …
"Oh," Sirius breathes, and the sadness in his voice from earlier seems to multiply exponentially. "Oh, Moony. Maybe … maybe that's the problem, then." Those smart gold fingers are sweeping back and forth across Remus's pulse point, and he wonders if Sirius can detect the rapid beat of his terrified heart. "Maybe you just need some better memories for them."
The edge of Sirius's thumbnail slides under the button on his cuff, undoing it. Remus feels a little faint. "Sirius, what-"
"Shh," Sirius whispers, but his voice is shaky, too. "Just let me ..."
And then Sirius starts touching him in earnest, his fingertips trailing lighter than lace across the jagged lines and raised tissue, his ragged thumbnail dipping into the curve of a tooth mark on Remus's wrist, index finger tracing over places mauled by claws. So gentle, so frail, so slow, but the scars are sensitive in ways even Remus didn't know about until now, and they burn and twist under his touch. "Oh, God," Remus gasps, "oh, God, what the fuck are you doing to me? "
As usual, Sirius pays him no mind, not even when Remus starts whimpering into the crook of his neck. "You know, Moony, you're kind of beautiful," he says, running his fingers up and down the veins in Remus's hand.
"No I'm not," Remus whispers. "I'm too tall, and too skinny, and I wear horrible sweaters and my nose is too big for my face."
Sirius barks out a laugh. "Yeah. I know."
His fingers brush over the juncture of three pinkish-silver marks on Remus's forearm and Remus can't help it; his hips jerk forward and his painfully intense erection grinds desperately against Sirius's ass. A sharp, gut-wrenching noise twists out of Sirius's throat as he shudders, too, and God help him, but Remus wants him so bad that he doesn't think he's going to survive it. "Sirius," he gasps, "what on earth do you think you're--"
And then Sirius turns around and kisses the words right out of Remus's mouth.
*****
Sirius has absolutely no idea what he's doing.
If you want the honest truth, he thinks he's maybe gone insane. It would certainly explain a lot of things, like why he's currently curled up on the floor kissing Remus Lupin well into tomorrow, why his hands can't seem to stop touching his skin. There's only one problem with this very convenient hypothesis: Sirius has never felt more sane in his life.
It's just that it's so ... good. Better than good, better than brilliant, better than ice cream and Saturdays and sharp things and explosions, like all those things mixed together and kind of minty-chocolaty flavored. It's the most heady, wonderful thing ever and Sirius is never going to stop kissing Remus, not ever, and then Remus finally gives in and starts kissing him back and oh my God it's even better.
Helplessly, Sirius moans as Remus sucks sharply at his tongue, grazes his teeth across his lower lip, attacks and twists and puts his hands on Sirius's neck and makes the most incredible noises. All growling half-pleas, rumbling rough and rich against his chest, and when he finally has to breathe it's a terrible, dreadful thing, mostly because that's when Sirius starts talking.
"I'm sorry," he babbles, his fists bunched up in Remus's shirt, "I'm really, really sorry, it's just that you smell really good and you're driving me crazy today and I think you probably drive me crazy every day, and I know that this is really not on and you're probably going to hate me forever but I think I really want this. I really want you. Did I mention how good you smell?"
Remus stares at him for a moment, lips parted and breathing hard, so intimately pressed against Sirius that it takes everything in Sirius's power not to start thrusting his hips right then and there. When Remus flicks his tongue out and licks his lips, Sirius whimpers a little. "Sirius," Remus says very slowly, and here it comes, the crushing blow, the making of an awkward moment that will probably haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Sirius winces a little in anticipation of it. "Yeah?"
"Whatever happens next is all your fault."
And then Remus is kissing him again, kissing him thorough and slow and then short and fast like little bursts of fire, tiny matches tossed all over his body and who knew Moony was such a pyromaniac? Who knew Moony was anything like this, making hungry little rumbling noises as he clutches furiously at Sirius's shoulders? None of them, and he is such an idiot for having this right under his nose all these years and never figuring it out until now.
Their bodies are moving now, moving together in a strange sort of synchronicity that Sirius didn't even know existed. One of Sirius's thighs manages to wedge itself between Remus's legs, and the thrust of Remus's cock against his leg is making it hard for Sirius to breathe. Moaning, he jerks and thrashes against the agonizingly wonderful friction, his entire body flying out of control and he no longer cares. Consequences are for poncers, anyway.
So sod Remus's stupid shirt and who cares if Sirius breaks off all the buttons and makes them scatter and dance on the cement floor? Not Sirius, that's for damn sure. Not when there's suddenly all this skin exposed, Remus's strong, slightly freckled shoulders, the first sparse beginnings of coppery chest hair, the sinews and the scars. Oh, but Moony is a pretty thing indeed, much more beautiful than Sirius thought, and what makes it all is the slightly awestruck expression on Remus's face.
"We're really going to do this, aren't we?" he asks.
Sirius frowns, runs a hand across Remus's chest, his thumb pushing experimentally against one of Remus's pale pink nipples until it hardens, tightens, makes Remus sigh. "Oh, yeah," Sirius murmurs, licking his lips greedily. "We're definitely going to do this."
Swiftly, before Remus can start listening to his big annoying brain, Sirius ducks his head down and licks at the nipple, an experimental swipe of tongue against eager flesh. Gasping, Remus thrashes and arches his back, muttering swear words that Sirius taught him when they were ten, and isn't it funny how things come to pass? Grinning, Sirius takes the erect bud between his teeth and tugs a little, and then moans when Remus shoves him backwards until he's sprawled on the floor and Remus is on top of him.
More kissing, yes, Sirius will never get tired of that, of this new way their mouths can wage war, with tongue and teeth and the absence of words. Remus's hands are moving everywhere, those skinny fingers touching and caressing, making Sirius writhe and shimmy underneath him. When Remus's fingertips pinch at Sirius's own nipple, he suddenly understands why it drove Remus batty and Sirius moans and makes incoherent noises as he blindly rubs himself against whatever parts of Remus he can find. "Need you, need you, want you so bad," he begs. "Please, Moony, get these fucking things off-"'
Something is snatched from behind his ear, and Remus gives him a half-mad grin. "Not until you get rid of that silly flower."
Sirius laughs. It's all kind of clumsy, as Sirius has only done this twice before and then, it was with a girl and things were very different. There weren't any belts or trousers to undo, no fumbling with buckles and flies. Sirius thinks he likes this better, the intimate dance of anxious hands trying desperately to get into secret places, and when he finally wraps his hand around Remus's stiff cock, Remus jerks and stiffens, his teeth sinking down into his juicy lower lip. "Oh, hell," Remus gasps, "oh, bloody fucking hell …"
And then Remus's fingers find Sirius's erection and Sirius knows exactly what he means.
What happens next is sort of a blur, a messy mosaic of sensations and sweat, as their bodies start moving together, thrusting into each other, slick cock against slick cock, kisses upon kisses until Sirius's mouth forgets how to do anything but this. This, right here, this fucking or shagging or kissing or whatever anyone wants to call it, this is brilliant. This is ecstasy. This is Remus, his hands, his mouth, his voice, his sighs, and Sirius wants to live inside this moment forever, keep this feeling for the rest of his life, because it is simply that bloody good.
Oh, I love you, Moony, I love you, I love you, I love you-
Sirius has no idea who comes first, and really, it doesn't matter, because suddenly they're both twisting and moaning together, bucking hips, grabbing wildly at flesh and lips as wave after wave of pleasure spills over them. And when it's over, Sirius smiles and decides that the boiler room was worth it after all.
*****
A part of Remus has always wondered if one could shag Sirius into silence. It's very disappointing to be proven wrong.
"So the next time, we'll get ourselves a proper bed, with cushions and all that because I think I've got bruises all over my bum and besides, there's leverage possibilities, did you know that? And there's this thing I read about once in a magazine my mum had, this thing you can do with your prostate, and--"
Naked and dazed, Remus leans against the heavy steel door with a lapful of equally naked Sirius and watches with a sort of morbid fascination as his hand strokes through Sirius's hair seemingly of its own volition. It's not normal, this. It's just plain odd. His skin is sticky in unusual places, the room now has a muskier, saltier smell to it than it did before, and he keeps finding himself bewitched by the magic of Sirius's skin. It is quite possibly the single strangest night in Remus's entire life.
Even stranger, he can't remember the last time he felt this fucking good.
"...'Cause you should do that thing again, Moony, that thing you did with your hips right there at the end? Oh, that was fantastic. You have to show me how you did that so I can show you how it felt. And we're going to need things, like lube and stuff, and you're going to have to brush up on your silencing charms because you know I'm crap at them, and ..."
His skin keeps tingling in the most unusual places, places Remus never thought of as erotic, but now everything is kind of sensual. His knees, his ankles, the backs of his hands. One of Sirius's feet keeps rubbing against his shin and it's like a slow melting, a boneless state he's tried for years to find and never knew until now. Part of Remus thinks that's dangerous. Too much potential for addiction. Other parts of Remus know he's already hooked. Probably has been for years.
Suddenly, one of Sirius's big, annoying thumbs jabs Remus mercilessly in the thigh. Yelping, Remus swats away the offending hand. "Ouch, Padfoot, that hurt."
And once again Remus is forced to bear witness to Sirius's mercurial mood swings. Annoyance is written all over Sirius's face, and there are telltale signs of a good sulk coming on. "I know what you're thinking, you know," he says accusatorially.
Remus arches an eyebrow dryly, frowns as he encounters a snag in Sirius's hair. "Really. Do tell."
"You're thinking that this is all a big mistake. You're thinking that I'm a total maniac who's made you do terrible things like have orgasms, and you're going to pretend that none of this ever happened. You're thinking that you're a prefect and a werewolf and you don't like boys and all sorts of other rot that isn't anywhere close to true. You're thinking that I'm going to use you and betray you but I won't, Moony, I just won't, because I really do love--"
Remus kisses him then, hard and possessive and exasperated, kisses him sound and thorough until Sirius forgets whatever sort of crap he's spouting off and starts kissing him back. When Remus finally pulls away, he takes a certain smug satisfaction in the wide-eyed way Sirius looks at him, like he's the entire bloody universe. Remus grins. Now this, he could get accustomed to.
"Actually," he says with a smirk, "I was thinking that we still have a good four hours before the house elves get here."
And this time, Remus happily takes the blame.