fic: sirius has a girlfriend, sirius/remus, Rish

[riko]

Rating: Soft R. Because I don't use the word penis or any of its synonyms.
Disclaimer: Rowling's. Go bug her.
Notes: This story is like a hundred of my little stories wrapped into one. It's taken me three months, and now it is done, done, done! Of course, it doesn't exactly live up to my expectations, but what does? Loosely based on Tori Amos's Taxi Ride and unbetaed. Take that as you will.
Warnings: Sirius/Remus
Summary: Sirius has a girlfriend.

1. beginning

Fog has got London's chinatown wreathed like a sultan's dancing girl and her veils, only a wink and giggle of skin beneath shifting, cloudy mesh. Rain hangs on the windows of China Joe's Noodle House, translucent lightning streaks that smear the headlights of cars and the red and gold neon signs until everything seems to burn a little brighter through the haze.

Remus is sitting in a booth next to one of these windows with a shoulder pressed against the smooth glass and a set of crappy chopsticks sandwiched between the thumb and index finger of his left hand.

China Joe's has got to be the worst fast food place in London - dirty, slow, and freezing. Which is probably why Sirius, who values perversity the same ways others value things like loyalty and honour, loves it so damn much. Needless to say, Remus isn't quite so keen on the place, but these days, what Sirius asks for Sirius gets.

Ignoring the need for sanitation? Difficult. Stealing your best friend away on a Thursday night when he probably has better things to do? Priceless.

But, even so, every time they do this Sirius has to point out that yes, he, Moony, has eaten much worse and so should stop making that face, please. And Remus has to counter by pointing out that while there is nothing wrong with eating rat when you have fur and paws - because that's what you do - there's something infinitely disturbing about eating rat because someone has told you it's chicken.

It's ritual, in almost the same way as these monthly dinners have become ritual. In exactly the same way as Sirius asking Remus to move in is ritual.

"Well?" Sirius prods when Remus has been silent for a minute or two.

Deep down, they both know he'll refuse; that's part of the tradition - he always refuses. Maybe some night when Remus is feeling as perverse as Sirius he'll say yes and see where that gets him, but tonight is not some night. Tonight is just another rainy night dinner. Tonight is just tonight.

"I don't think so, Sirius."

"Yeah," Sirius sighs and drops his chopsticks into his bowl. They make a plastic clink and spin in a wobbly circle until they run out of momentum. "You never think so. After a while, a guy's going to start taking this kind of rejection personally. Especially when they've seen the slum you're living in now."

Remus makes a low scoffing sound and sets his own chopsticks down, balancing them carefully across the rim. "My apartment is not a slum."

"Your landlord's a complete cock."

"That doesn't make my apartment a slum."

Outside, a taxi rushes by, splattering the bottom of Remus's window with muddy water and leaving a sound like a tsunami dopplering into the distance. From somewhere in his jacket, Sirius produces a cigarette pack and thumps it against the blue laminate tabletop before saying:

"Just don't forget I'm owed a few I told you so's when he finally kicks you out."

"Noted," Remus says, edging on sarcasm. It probably deserves a rolling of the eyes too, but he's distracted at the last moment when two cigarettes fall out of the pack.

Sirius rolls one toward himself as he crumples the empty pack and drops it into his soup bowl to be collected and disposed of by the waitress. The second cigarette just lies on the table, halfway between Remus and Sirius like the eight deadly sin, prepackaged and wrapped neatly in white paper.

"You smoking yet this month, Moony?"

"I hadn't been...yet," Remus says and picks up the cigarette anyway.

His smoking comes and goes in stages, tied, like everything else in his life, to the phases of the moon. According to his internal clock, there's still one or two more days before the lycanthropic tide pulls hard enough to make his bones ache and sends him off to the tobacco store on the corner seeking smoky sanctuary, but what the hell? Sirius usually guards his smokes like a jealous boyfriend; it's rare that he offer any, let alone the last of a pack. It's something to be coveted, for sure. Something Lily, James, and Peter will never be privy to. And it just might be that this thought satisfies like nicotine never can.

Across the table, fire flickers ghostly as Sirius lights up. He takes a long, lazy drag before sliding the lighter over to Remus who still stolidly refuses to carry his own. That way, he can at least pretend to be a non-smoker.

A round of silent puffing follows, giving Remus a chance to actually look Sirius over, and his eyes pick up a few details they'd missed earlier.

He's clean scrubbed tonight. The layer of stubble that seems to perpetually grace his chin and upper lip has been shaved, and his hair is not only loosely ponytailed but washed, brushed, and neatly parted too. The white oxford Remus can see just under Sirius's jacket, buttoned just under the concave juncture of his collarbones, has also been freed of its intrinsic Sirius-ness, bleached and pressed to remove coffee stains and ink blemishes. Now that he's thinking about it, Remus can smell cologne in the air.

It's hardly a guess when Remus asks, "Have a date tonight?"

Sirius grins sideways around his glowing cigarette. "You mean besides you?"

Remus's stomach clenches, but he ignores it and focuses on the crinkle in the corner of Sirius's eye. I'm teasing, it says. I'm teasing, and you're stupid for pretending that maybe I'm not. Without wincing or blinking or anything, Remus changes the subject. He's getting very good at this.

"What's her name?"

"Ah," Sirius says and looks very much like he's trying to remember. "Chloe. I don't think you've met yet."

"Who can keep up?"

"Ouch! Low blow."

Remus grins and stabs his cigarette cruelly into the ashtray. Sirius glances none-too-subtly at his watch and does the same. "Sorry."

"No, you're not."

"No, I'm not."

With a little sigh, Sirius clasps his hands over his heart in a "you wound me " gesture and abruptly gets up to pay their bill. Remus doesn't even have a chance to suggest they go half-and-half on it, which was probably Sirius's intention.

While Sirius stalks over to the cash, Remus stands up and shakes out his old, brown overcoat which is wrinkled from a good forty-five minutes of being sat on. Then he has to wait at the door for a few minutes while Sirius flirts with the pretty white girl behind the counter. When he finally walks over, he's got a phone number written on the back of his receipt.

"You're shameless," Remus says.

Sirius snorts. "I prefer to think of it as keeping my options open. Or whatever it was they kept telling us in school." He shoves the reciept into an inside pocket and shoulders his way out of the restaurant. Remus bows his head and follows - wondering idly if Chloe has the sense to frisk Sirius for phone numbers before their dates.

China Joe's, for all its bad points, at least has air conditioning, and stepping out into London is like jumping from the arctic into a tropic rainforest. Another taxi rushes by, too close to the curb, and splashes a crumpled rag of a woman, selling cigarettes out of an old wood box. Without really intending to, Remus checks his pockets for change.

"You need a ride or anything?" Sirius asks. He's got an eye on the cigarette woman too, but Chloe's siren call must be strong because what he takes out of his pocket is a keycahin not a wallet. "I've got the bike parked just up the block. I could drop you...well, a little closer to home, anyway."

Sirius is obviously trying to send him some sort of ESP message telling him to say no. He wants to get out of here and fold himself into the waiting warmth of Chloe's labia or whatever. It makes Remus a little hurt and a little furious and a lot more willing to refuse.

"It's okay. I'll walk or take the Tube."

"You sure?" Sirius body language makes this out to be a question - eyebrows rasied, head tipped to one side - but his tone of voice makes it clear that this is not a question. This is a thank you. "Okay, then. I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah," Remus makes an awkward waving gesture. "Have a nice night."

If there's any doubt that Sirius is planning to fuck this Chloe girl stupid, the wolfish grin that hits his face at this moment destroys it entirely.

"Oh, I will." Then he sobers a little. "And, hey, I mean it, you know. If you ever need somewhere to stay..."

"I have your home number, your work number, your address, your work address, and the addresses of the nearest floo stations to both your flat and your office. I can find you, don't worry."

Sirius grins again, bashful puppy this time rather than prowling carnivore. A long strand of hair strays across his forehead, and he crosses his eyes to stare at it.

"I need to get a haircut."

"You do."

"Later, Remus."

"Bye, Padfoot."

Remus waits until Sirius has disappeared into the chinatown night. Then he crosses the street and buys a pack of cigarettes for three pounds. He has to borrow a light, but then nicotine and tar and god knows what else flood his lungs, and he starts to make his way home.

The cigarette doesn't taste nearly as good as Sirius's.

- - -

Remus has had a crush on Sirius Black since he was nineteen. The unofficial count may actually go past that, back into seventh year, but officially, Remus pinpoints the moment he realized he was pining after his best friend to the evening of July 27, 1979.

That night, the Potters's backyard was lit by hundreds of tiny tea candles which bobbed through the sky in candleholders shaped like lotus blossoms. "It's like magic " the muggle guests would exclaim when a light swam over their heads, no wires visible. Mr. and Mrs. Potter would smile agreeably and reply, "Yes, isn't it?"

The clutter of brooms and laundry baskets that Remus had always associated with the yard had been spirited away for this one night to be replaced with white patio furniture and a tarp to ward off rain. Sleepy lilacs and yellow lilies, dark in the candlelight, wound up the tarp poles and the crisscrossing lattice arch where, an hour and a half ago, Lily Evans had been transformed - nearly magically - into Lily Evans Potter.

"Why," asked James Potter (now, arguably, James Evans-Potter) of the other Marauders lounging at the head table, "do I get the feeling I'm about to be cuckolded on my wedding night?"

"Because Lily is dancing suggestively with Sirius?" Peter suggested.

Remus shook his head. "Because Lily is dancing suggestively with Sirius, and you aren't doing anything about it."

"Ah," said James as if this cleared everything up. Remus wished it cleared everything up, but he still felt an uncomfortable lump in his throat as he watched Lily flop farther up Sirius's thigh; they were both laughing. If this was jealously over Lily's wedding, Remus thought, it had been ridiculously slow in showing up.

"So," James said finally, after many minutes of - Remus assumed - trying to kill Sirius with his mind. "What you're saying is I should be a man..."

"Yes."

"...And go over there and steal my wife back."

"Yes," Peter and Remus chorused together.

James considered this for a moment, downed the last of his champagne , said "Right then," and got to his feet.

Once James was crossing the make-shift dance floor and out of earshot, Peter leaned forward in his creaky plastic chair and tapped the table. "What do you want to bet that it comes to blows? I'll give you three to one odds."

Remus snorted and said, "That's no bet, Wormtail," but he felt oddly satisfied when James snatched Lily back with only a mock fight. That feeling doubled when Lily leaned back against James's chest and gave him a blitzed, madly-in-love sort of smile. By the time Sirius had reached the Mauraders's table, James and Lily were dancing nose-to-nose and plotting how to escape to the privacy of James's old bedroom.

"Is it just me or is Evans looking oddly hot tonight?" Sirius asked, flopping into the chair James had just left and reaching for the half-empty bottle of champagne.

"It's just you," Remus snapped, bristling. This anger, he told himself, was because after so many years of hating her, Lily's name and the word "hot" coming in the same sentence from the mouth of Sirius Black was so wrong - not to mention shallow - as to almost be profane.

Sirius, on the other hand, seemed to find Remus's sharp tone unwarranted. His eyebrows rose up and disappeared behind his bangs, his hand froze on the neck of the champagne bottle until little beads of condensation began to gather in the folds of his fingers.

"What's got you hacked off?"

"Nothing."

"Bollocks. Is this about you and Lily? I know you two used to fool around a bit..."

They had, in sixth year when Remus had hated everyone. Especially the Marauders. Especially Sirius. But it hadn't meant much to either of them, so Remus didn't have to lie when he said, "No."

Sirius obviously thought this was bollocks too, and he said so.

"Bollocks. Again." Sirius let go of the champagne bottle and laced his fingers in front of him. "Do you know what you need?"

"Enlighten me." Remus bit out, but Sirius missed the cautionary note in Remus's voice.

"You need to get out there and find one of Lily's pretty young friends, dance, and get your mind of the enchanting, and painfully married, Ms. Potter nee Evans, ok?"

It's not about Lily, Remus wanted to shout but then he would doubtlessly be interrogated as to what the fuck it was about then? And Remus hadn't quite figured that part out yet. Although, the blue-gold of Sirius's eyes by candlelight had begun to give him an idea.

"Oh yes. That's exactly what Lily's friends are waiting for. For some cripple to hobble up and ask them to dance. 'Ever dance with a man with a cane? Ho, ho, ho.'"

"That's what's stopping you?" Sirius seemed genuinely, and in Remus's opinion, unnecessarily shocked. "Well, shit, Moony. I can fix that." He slipped to his feet and maneovered around the table and guests until he was looming over Remus's chair, so close that Remus could feel the body heat coming off him in waves. He held out a hand in a surreal, fairytale gesture and grinned. "Wanna dance?"

Realization didn't hit then, although a warm wave of butterfly nasuea did; it hit half a second later when Peter chortled.

"Get a room, you two."

That was when Remus realized that he wanted to dance, and he wanted to get a room, and he wanted to fuck himself dry into the condensation-wet palm of Sirius's left hand.

And he's known it ever since.

- - -

It's a Wednesday afternoon in September, and there are six manila file folders spread out on Sirius's desk. Each contains the vital stats, picture, and personal history of a wizard who has gone AWOL in the last two weeks. Sirius is related -- in that twisty, obscure fashion that only Blacks and Malfoys can really manage - to at least three. Nigel Garside. Olivia Pelham. Regulus Black.

It's pissing him off. Hell! He doesn't want to know what Regulus thinks he's doing - even though he's already got an idea or two. Being a complete, sodding idiot sums it up pretty well.

The Ministry's getting reports of more and more people defecting to join Voldemort these days, and each morning someone from admin staples a new black-and-white wanted photo to the bulletin board near the stairs and then a new manila folder shows up in the pile.

He and James and a couple of the rookie Aurors have the enviable job of tracking down all these manila-folder wizards and updating their status to clear ("Sorry, mate, just wanted to checkup on where you were. War and stuff, y'know?"), defect (in which case, they're expected to detain said wizard for interrogation and imprisonment), or dead.

That's the fun bit, as much as anything is fun with a full-blown almost-war going on. After that, there's paperwork. Case reports, procedure reports, legal briefs, etcetera. Remus has always seemed surprised that Sirius would submit himself to a job that leaves him so responsible to nameless suits with desk jobs. Which is sort of valid and sort of not and really a very Remus thing to say because it sounds very insightful but probably has a lot more to do with want Remus is feeling than what Sirius is.

Sometimes - when he's only pretending to work - Sirius wonders if Remus hates him. He doesn't think so, at least not hate in any meaningful, personal way. But Remus had always wanted this job, and Sirius had only ever thought that it would be kind of cool.

On his black plywood bookcase, shoved into the back corner of his cubicle, there's a whole book of regulations about who can become an Auror and who can't. On something like the seventh page, it says that apparently the first son of the worst Pureblood family imaginable can, but a werewolf can't.

Sirius thinks this is really fucking stupid, and he thinks that the people who made that rule up must be equally stupid, but it's attitude like that which landed him as a second-tier field Auror rather than one of the black tie desk jockeys down in admin. And even though he knows that the regs are really fucking stupid, and he knows that everyone knows he thinks they're really fucking stupid, he still wonders if Remus hates him for being the one to apparate into work every day and go on Ministry raids and scrawl notes in manila folders.

"Earth to Black? Come in Sirius Black "

Sirius's head snaps up, and he spins around in his chair to glower at James who's come to lean in the doorway of his cubicle and chat.

"What do you want?"

James tilts his chin down towards his chest so that he can grin over his glasses. He thinks doing this makes him look mature and knowledgeable, but it really doesn't. Sirius just hasn't gotten around to telling him that. "If you were any more zoned out," James says, "I think we'd have to declare you away-without-leave."

"Hrmph," Sirius mutters, turning back to his stack of files. "What's up really, Prongs?"

"I was just over in my office," Sirius hopes the bastard hasn't come to show off his promotion, "flipping through the new cases and...thought I should come by and make sure you were okay with this."

So James had got the Regulus file too.

"Busting bad guys? S'what I live for."

"That's not what I meant," James says in that really irritating tone of voice he's developed since he got married. Sensible or something. "I should be filling out a piece of paper saying you've got an emotional attachment to the case, yadda, yadda, conflict of interest. But you're my mate, right? And I thought I should check with you before I do something to get you pulled from the case."

Sirius plasters on his best "it's cool" grin and shakes his head. "I'm good. Really, super good. Regulus is a little ass, anyway, and it's not like I didn't see this coming."

"You think defect for sure, then?" James asks, chewing the inside of his lip. James hasn't seen Regulus since school ended, unless he's doing something on his time off that Sirius is not aware of and that's not very likely, but even he can see that Regulus is a defector. If their parents had had a bit more foresight, they could've named him Traitor Black. But then, that's a bit redundant, isn't it?

"Yeah," Sirius keeps his eyes squarely on James, making very sure not to even glance at the Regulus's file. He's trying to project just how much he doesn't care right now, but he can't tell whether it's getting across. "I just have to find proof to back it up."

James gives him a thorough staring, and Sirius has this moment of pure terror when he thinks that James might actually submit that goddamn "letter of concern" to the higher-ups, but then the glasses come off, and James sighs.

"Right then."

"Right."

James polishes his glasses spotless and jams them back on. "Just keep me up to speed, ok?"

"Sure thing, Pr -"

A distant ringing noise interrupts, sends Sirius searching through the mess on his desk for the phone. It's tacky blue, and he feels a bit lame for keeping it around, but ever since he bought the bike, the guy from Muggle Artifacts - Arthur...something - has been foisting things on him. James has gotten used to phones from hanging around Lil, so he doesn't even twitch when Sirius picks up the receiver.

"Hello? Sirius Black speaking."

There's a small sound like somebody taking a deep, steadying breath - and Sirius almost thinks he hears the word "shit" - before a perfectly familiar voices says:

"Sirius? It's me."

Sirius has known for a long time that Remus has this way of turning things around in his head, so that yes starts meaning no and "I'd really like you to share my flat" becomes "I hope you stay in that horrible little apartment with that horrible landlord for the rest of your life." By this point, he expects that Remus expects that he expects that Remus is always going to say no and that he would be incredibly pissed off were the opposite to happen.

Which is why he's floored when Remus (because it's Remus on the phone, of course) doesn't even wait for him to say hello before jumping straight to:

"Look, I don't know if you meant it or not, but my landlord's just kicked me out-"

Sirius is not surprised. Remus's landlord is such racist slime that even the Blacks would be proud to call him their own. He's never liked the idea of having a werewolf tenant, and it was really only a matter of time before he suckered someone else into paying for Remus's crappy flat.

"Told you so," Sirius says and mouths a quick "Moony" at James who's obviously never heard of privacy and is still hanging out in the door. He's probably got nothing better to do now that he's a Supervisor and everything. Bastard.

"Yes you did," says the voice of Remus, sounding a little irked, "but what I was wondering was..."

"Need to crash at my place?"

A little sigh. "Would it be too much of a problem?"

Which just goes to prove that Sirius's theory about the inner workings of Remus's brain is completely accurate. Sometimes, he wishes he wasn't so brilliant.

"How long have I been asking you to move in? How many times have I begged you to leave that damn hole you've been living in?"

"Many," Remus concedes.

"Try thousands. Try millions. Do you need me to pick you up?"

And here he almost hears Remus crinkle his nose. Does anyone hate the bike more than Remus Lupin? N - O.

"You're working, don't worry about it," is the polite response Remus settles on, and Sirius doesn't even try to pretend he isn't scoffing.

"I have to come by to unlock the door anyway. It's not a problem? James," he swings around in his chair and holds the receiver in the direction of a startled James, "is it okay if I take off a little early to help Moony move into my place?"

James grins and says, in a stage-shout so that Remus can hear, "Perfectly fine, Padfoot. Moony's landlord was a cock anyway."

Remus is laughing before Sirius gets the phone back to his ear, and it makes him smile like an idiot just to hear.

"Fine. You win. And tell James I know."

"I will. Where are you?"

"Payphone outside my building," Remus sighs, and as if to prove he's telling the truth, a horn honks loudly in the background.

"I'll be there in ten, fifteen minutes, is that okay?"

"I don't think people could be staring at me anymore than they already are. Take your time."

"Fifteen minutes," Sirius repeats firmly. "I'll be there."

"Thank you."

They hang up at more or less the same time, and Sirius flies into motion, tucking most of his folders into a desk drawer except Regulus's which he jams under his arm. Finally, with a quill clenched between his teeth and his jacket only half-pulled on, he pushes past James with a little wave and a mumbled "See you tomorrow."

"Say hi to Remus," James calls.

- - -

It had rained pretty badly the night he left home. From his second-floor window in a house that did not exist in any real spatial plane, Sirius could look out at the streets below and watch as the street lamps cast shattered mosaics of light on the wet asphalt and the grass clippings, the ones the neighbors had forgotten to clear up, collected on the sewer grating.

He packed in silence, and in the library below, his father raged in silence. Their whole war, from the day Sirius had made friends with Remus and James and Peter, had been fought in silence until tonight when words had finally been spoken and screamed. So, he packed without saying anything or even so much as stepping on a loose floorboard because that was the tradition.

Not everyone seemed to be aware of the tradition, however.

"You are such a fucking twonk, bro," said Regulus from his place half-in and half-out of Sirius's room, leaning against the doorframe like the anti-hero in some cool muggle flick.

"How," Sirius asked, not bothering to look up from the half-filled suitcase, "out of the two of us, am I the twonk?"

"Because I'd swear you actually buy into that stuff about good versus evil that they keep preaching at school. That's why you're a twonk. Because you are so fucking stupid."

At that, Regulus had rapped the door sharply with his knuckles, like a punctuation mark, and Sirius just stared, wondering if anyone could possibly that narrowminded, short-sighted, and still have the brain mass to breathe and talk at the same time. He let the suitcase clack shut and then flicked the clasps into place and tore out of the room.

"You haven't even told your friends yet, have you?" Regulus demanded as Sirius pushed past into the hall but then curiosity made Sirius stop, turn, and look at his brother levelly, as a brother, for probably the last time.

"Told them what?"

"About Voldemort," and Regulus grinned darkly because he already knew the answer was no.

When Sirius showed up, soaking, on Remus's porch hours later, with a suitcase, only half-packed, in one hand and bloody knuckles on the other, Remus did what he always did: took it in stride, accepted it as just one more little thing to be dissected, pondered, and then dealt with.

That night, when Remus opened his red-stained poplar door with its three little windows at the top and its large black knocker, Sirius had almost confessed everything about Voldemort and his father, about Regulus's war, and about how long he'd known it was coming, but he was tired and cold, drained to his core, and Remus smiled just a little, not frailly or secretively, just a little smile, when he recognized that it was Sirius standing out in the rain. In the end, what Sirius said was, "Hey, Moony. Sorry I'm disturbing you so late."

- - -

2. middle

It's early fall, so the doors of Sirius's building are shut. In the summer, the superintendent keeps them wide open to let the kids from Queen Mary wander in and out, even when they're too drunk to remember their keys. Now, though, the air is too cold and too damp for this to be practical, and Remus has to wait on the gray concrete steps with two suitcases and a black garbage bag beside him while Sirius finds a place to park the bike.

Remus really wants to believe that this is a bad idea, but he loves Sirius like a brother. They're best friends. They get along great and, except for the occasional fight, some serious and some not so much so, that's always been the case. The fact is that moving in with Sirius is probably going to be the smartest thing he's ever done...

Except that he also loves Sirius like more than a brother, and he's scared to distraction that he's going to fuck this up. Because he's Remus Lupin, and he's always been better with books and arithmancy than with people.

"Hey " Sirius barks, coming around the corner, keys looped around his thumb. He stops at the bottom of the stairs and jerks his head towards the second floor. "Ready to go?"

Remus picks at the thready hole in the knee of his jeans, avoiding Sirius's eyes in a way that isn't subtle at all. "Sure."

Sirius reaches over and grabs the garbage bag as Remus gets to his feet and picks up his suitcases.

"Welcome home," Sirius says over his shoulder.

Remus smiles and shakes his head. "You couldn't resist, could you?"

Sirius makes a weird expression that Remus can't quite place, somewhere between thoughtful and confused maybe, before grinning brightly.

"Nope. Guess I couldn't."

- - -

Sirius has a subscription to the Prophet which arrives every morning promptly on the windowsill, but soon they have a paperboy dropping the Times off in their mailbox as well. This is mostly for Remus's benefit because he's given up on ever finding a wizarding job that won't require him to lie through his teeth to get in. For now, Sirius pays for it, but Remus has promised himself that as soon as he finds a job, he'll take up the slack.

"With your marks," Sirius says from the kitchen, "I'm sure they'd give you a job at Gringotts or something."

On the couch in the front room, Remus rolls his eyes and tucks one of his bare feet underneath him to warm up. "I doubt it," he calls back. "For one thing, Gringotts has one of the strictest screening policies around, considering that it deals with rich," Remus draws a vicious x through a sales executive listing, "bigoted--"

"Pureblood assholes. Ok, point."

"And secondly, there is nothing wrong with a muggle job."

Sirius sighs dramatically, and there's a screech as he pushes his chair back from the kitchen table and then thudding as he walks heavily over to the couch. The skin on Remus's neck twitches as Sirius leans over Remus's shoulder, and his flyaway hair brushes Remus's cheek.

"Well, don't let them push you into taking just any job," Sirius says, and his voice is low and gruff near Remus's ear.

"I won't," is all Remus can say at first, and even that only just above a whisper, but then he gathers his confidence, courage, and the remains of his dignity and pushes Sirius roughly. "And get a haircut."

Sirius snorts and heads back into the kitchen while Remus tries not to crumple into a pathetic ball of nerves and sexual frustration on the couch. Instead, he rubs his face.

There's no way this is going to work out.

- - -

A month after Remus moves in, Sirius starts secretly bringing in copies of the Times to work. He lays them out beside copies of the Prophet and cross-references, looking for something that might lead him to Voldemort's Deatheaters and, ergo, to Regulus.

Usually, there's absolutely nothing, and it's getting to the point where Sirius wants to rip every scrap of paper in his office to pieces and incendio the lot of it.

As usual, James pops his head in through the cubicle door just when Sirius is getting ready to carry out his plan. Having your supervisor-slash-friend hanging over your shoulder sort of puts a crimp in any plans of mass destruction, Sirius has found.

"How are things going with the little missus?" James asks, grinning like the big dork he is.

"If Remus hears you call him that, he'll beat the shit out of you."

"Heh," James scratches the back of his head. "He probably could too."

Sirius nods and circles a letter to the editor about a hoodlum gang in the west end. "He's the one I'd be putting my money on."

"So you two haven't killed each other yet?"

"No, we're good. We're surprisingly good."

"Well good," James smirks and drums his finger against the cubicle wall like he's nervous about what he's going to say next. Finally, he asks, "How... goes the case?"

Sirius picks up a quill and throws it at him.

- - -

On Halloween, Sirius bursts into James's office and drops a stack of newspapers a hand's spread tall on his desk.

"I think I've found him - them - him."

James sets down his own set of manila folders and raises his eyebrows.

"Hm?"

"Regulus! The Deatheaters! Whatever!"

"Uh," James lets his glasses slip down his nose so that he can stare over them. Sirius can barely stand still he's so wired, and James must be a bit freaked out by that because the next thing he asks is not "Oh, really Sirius? Where are they?" but "Are you okay, mate?"

Sirius wishes he hadn't put the stack of newspapers down, so that he could throw them at James's head. "Yes, I'm fine! I've just been working on this case for two goddamn fucking months, and I think I finally cracked it!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Look, here!" Sirius grabs the only other chair in the office and pulls it around so that he can straddle it and flip through the newspapers. "A gang of thugs pushing people around near Carnaby. Five muggles got beaten up in the Leicester Square station within the last month and a half. These are good neighborhoods, but in the last six months people have been complaining that they're too scared to walk near Buckingham Palace after dark! You can't tell me that's normal!"

"I've always been a little scared to do that myself," James mutters, taking one of the papers and skimming the circled articles. "Look, Padfoot, I'll admit it's a little weird, but..."

Sirius cuts him off with a sigh. He knows the regulations backwards and forwards, ten times as well as James, but he was hoping that maybe James wouldn't see the evidence as circumstantial or weak, and they could just say to hell with it this time.

"I'll see if I can get someone to keep an eye on the neighborhood," James says, like that's a decent peace offering, "but until you find something more substantial, I can't ask for authorization on an all-out raid."

"Yeah, bugger," Sirius says as the clock on James's wall starts to chime. "I know."

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I basically knew that was the answer when I came in here. I just hoped..." Sirius shrugs.

James smiles sympathetically. "Yeah."

The clock dings for the eighth time, and Sirius gets to his feet.

"I better head home."

James says goodnight, and Sirius walks back to his cubicle to pack up for the night. It's nearly nine by the time he gets the bike parked, so he's confused as hell when he meets Remus, wrapped in his ratty brown felt overcoat and old Gryffindor scarf, heading up the stairs to the front door.

Tomorrow is the first day of November, but the leaves are still falling out of the trees, and a red and yellow oak leaf is caught in Remus's hair. He's got his keys out, and a white plastic bag hangs from the fingers of his left hand, and if Sirius wasn't as straight as Oxford Street, he'd say that Remus looks perfect.

"Oh. Hey, Padfoot."

Sirius trudges carefully over the wet leaves coating the steps to stand next to Remus.

"Hey," he says.

Remus's eyes flick up and down. Then his mouth creases in a frown, and he lifts an eyebrow.

"Rough day?"

"Tch. What makes you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know. Possibly because it's nine o'clock, you're just getting home from work, and you look like you need to get drunk, badly."

Despite Regulus and work and all of it, Sirius smiles. "I'd settle for a cigarette or a good shag," he quips.

For some reason, this doesn't seem to have been a good thing to say because Remus's face freezes, and he looks down at his shoes.

"Can't help you there," he mumble-whispers.

Sirius has never had particularly good intuition when it comes to people who aren't pretty girls, and he's got a history of saying the wrong thing to Remus that goes on and on ad infinitum, but even he can tell that now is the perfect time to change the subject.

"You're getting home pretty late too, y'know."

Now this is apparently exactly the right thing to say because Remus looks up and smiles one of those perfect, brilliant, and entirely rare smiles.

"I got a job."

"Stone me! Where? Doing what?"

Remus laughs, looking so proud of himself for once. "C'mon, the Chinese food is getting cold."

Sirius looks down at the plastic bag and breaks out grinning. "You got take-out? Man, Moony, you're the coolest girlfriend ever."

Remus's keys jingle as they're shoved into the lock, and Remus himself snorts and rolls his eyes.

"Shut up, Padfoot."

- - -

It's snowing when Remus finally decides that this is going to work.

By day, he teaches high school english at the Rosemead Preparatory School. All his students there are rich, little troublemakers with no respect for anyone and an excuse for everything. For some reason, Remus feels perfectly at home.

By night, Remus sits in the beat-up brown chair he and Sirius scrounged out of a neighbour's trash and corrects papers. Sometimes Sirius is home, and sometimes he isn't. With this case, which Sirius refuses to talk about except in round-about, vague terms, Remus can understand. He can see the stress even if he doesn't know the cause.

But when Sirius is home, they laugh and argue about who could take who in a fight, and Remus thinks life might just be perfect because even though he isn't with Sirius, he's with Sirius and that could be, should be, will be enough.

- - -

"I'm not sure about this," Sirius says one afternoon. He's sitting on the end of Remus's bed, which isn't really a bed so much as an old futon couch and a patchwork frame, and watching as Remus carefully fastens chains and handcuffs and locks to the far wall of the room.

"I can't keep locking myself up in the basement," Remus manages to mutter around his mouthful of nails. "Someone's bound to notice."

"And you don't think they'll notice you stomping around and howling up here every month?"

Remus shrugs. "They'll probably just think you got a dog."

Sirius stares at him for a bit before flopping back onto the bed and kicking his legs out. "Or they might think that I'm really great in bed."

"You haven't had a girlfriend in months. They'll probably just think you're out of practice."

Sirius makes an offended noise and lobs a pillow at Remus's head, forcing Remus to leave his project long enough to remind Sirius why they had stopped letting him join in pillow fight back in fourth year.

- - -

People in red toques and snowflake print scarves are caroling outside The Kings Head on the night that Sirius decides that maybe he's becoming an alcoholic. It's nearly ten, and Sirius can't remember the last time he's been home before midnight.

And why? Regulus, Regulus, Regulus. For years, Sirius hasn't cared at all about what his brother does or thinks, except when it involved his friends, but now its all he thinks about every day except for the time he spends at home with Remus and the time he spend at The Kings Head, drunk.

Where is he? What is he doing? What is he thinking?

They've got enough evidence now, enough weird occurrences in and around Soho that can only be chocked up to magic, that James and Sirius both think they should be allowed to charge in and take the place out, but for reasons no one can fathom, the higher ups are dragging their feet.

It is, quite literally, driving Sirius to drink. He downs the last of his pint of Samuel Smith and bangs his head against the bar.

"Hey, cutie," purrs a female voice by his elbow.

Usually a voice like that would be enough to at least make Sirius raise his head off the counter, but tonight, he's not in the mood. He hasn't been in the mood for months, and maybe that's part of the reason he feels like his world has gone crazy, maybe all he needs is to get laid to clear his head, but it just seems weird...

"Listen, lady," he says, lifting his head and turning blearily toward her. "I'm sure you're nice, but..."

She's a red-head, not red like Lily's which is completely natural, but a dyed, pure, fire-engine sort of red. And she's got cool grey-green eyes and piercings all up her right ear.

She looks nothing like Remus, and Sirius isn't at all sure why that's important.

Her mouth twists up to the side as she looks at him. "You're sure I'm very nice but...?"

"But..." Sirius drawls while he waits for his brain to catch up, "I never feel right talking to a pretty lady without being properly introduced first."

"Emily Walpole," she laughs, holding out her hand.

"Sirius Black."

- - -

Melting snow is piled up on the sill of Remus's window, streaking the panes in a way that reminds him of China Joe's month and months before. It transmutes the pink-orange light of the streetlights into something a little colder and, at the same time, a little softer.

Remus is having trouble sleeping tonight, and it has nothing to do with the snow or the streetlights or the waxing of the moon and everything to do with the rhythmic thumping coming through the wall that separates Remus's room from Sirius's.

It's been... going on a month now that Sirius and this, this... whatever her name is have been shagging. She doesn't go home anymore, and though she hasn't moved her stuff in, Remus is certain it won't be long before she does.

He's come to think of her as Ophelia, really. Except, she smiles too much, happy and carefree, so, she's like Ophelia in act one before everything falls apart. It's not really her name, of course, but he can't remember what her real name is, so Ophelia will do.

Sirius is never home these days, except for the rare occasions when he needs to sleep or pay the rent or shag with Ophelia. When Remus gets up in the morning, Sirius is already off to work, and when Remus goes to bed at night, Sirius isn't home yet. He finds himself spending more time with Ophelia than with his flatmate and best friend.

She makes coffee while he reads the newspaper and chatters about her university classes while wearing Sirius white oxford with the ink stains on the cuff. Her piercings get caught in her hair when she gets excited and moves her head too much, and Remus wonders if he should finds this endearing, if he should think of her as a person not just this, this transient thing that ruined a life he was just getting to enjoy.

Ophelia. She's with Sirius, anyway, so in the end, she's just as doomed.

- - -

Despite all the things that have started going right, Sirius finds that he's still not happy, and, really, that's just stupid because A) he's got a girlfriend who one day is going to be a civil engineer and is either a psychopath or the coolest person Sirius has ever met, and B) he has the greatest roommate any guy could ask for, the only person possibly cooler than his girlfriend, and C) things at work are finally starting to move again, so soon he'll be able to make London a safer place and put Regulus behind bars where he won't have a chance to hurt himself doing stupid things.

With so much great in his life, Sirius isn't sure why he feels the urge to punch himself in the face all the time, or why he's developed the habit of referring to himself as ‘asshole' when he brushes his teeth every morning.

It probably has something to do with Remus. Because what in his life hasn't had something to do with Remus in the last nine years? And now they only get the chance to see each other when the rent is due every month or in the awkward few minutes at the end of the day before Remus shuts his bedroom door.

Usually they never get a chance to see each other in the morning - Remus sleeps like the dead, and Sirius is gone as soon as he's awake enough to drive - but this morning, Sirius hangs around long enough to greet Remus as he comes out his room, still dressed in baggy flannel pajama pants and rubbing sleep out of his eyes with a fist.

"Mmmfrg," he says, slipping into the kitchen chair across the table from Sirius, "what are you still doing here?"

Sirius rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "Just hanging around."

Remus's eyebrows raise, but he doesn't question it. Instead, he looks about for the coffeepot and the box of grounds.

"I already made a pot of coffee for you," says Sirius quietly.

He doesn't know why he feels the need to be quiet right now, but it probably has something to do with the fact that Emily is still sleeping. Or maybe it has more to do with the worry about tonight's raid that's lodged itself tight in his chest. It is possible, although nearly inconceivable, that he could die tonight, and all he wants to do is make sure that he gets a chance to say goodbye before he heads out to work.

Across the city, in the Potters's flat, Sirius expects that James is doing the same.

"Oh," Remus says looking sleepy and pleased, "then I won't have to kill you."

"For trying to talk to you before you had coffee?" Sirius asks with a smile.

"Mmmhmm..." hums Remus, pulling himself back to his feet and shuffling over to where the coffeepot is sitting on the counter, making dripping noises. He pours coffee into the white ceramic cup that has the words "Professor Lupin" and some rainbows and flowers painted clumsily on to it, made for him by, Remus swears, the most insufferable suck up the universe ever stooped to creating. He leans with his back to the counter, closes his eyes, and sips quietly as Sirius just watches. Finally, he opens his eyes again and asks: "Really, Padfoot. Why're you still here?"

"What? I live here! Can't I just hanging around? In my own house?"

Remus is clearly not impressed with this answer. He sets his ugly coffee mug down on the counter and crosses his arm in front of his chest in a no nonsense, I-mean-business sort of way. Sirius sighs.

"You're going to think I'm a sap."

"Possibly," Remus agrees.

"See," Sirius spreads his hand in front of him, palms up, "we're going on this raid tonight, and I just wanted to say goodbye in case... bad stuff happens... Satisfied?"

For a moment, Remus looks like he's swallowed something that tasted odd but then he smiles slowly and looks down and to the side. "Yes. Thank you." He picks up his coffee cup and comes back to sit at the table. "And you are a sap, by the way."

Sirius laughs. "Yeah, I know. Thanks."

Remus shakes his head and rolls his shoulder in a shrug.

When Emily wakes up, Remus picks up his things and moves back to his room. At one point, Sirius thought that maybe Remus was just worried about invading their privacy, but he's decided that this probably isn't the case. Remus either really hates Emily or really likes her, and Sirius can't quite decide which is more plausible.

"Is Moony okay?" she asks, smiling faintly and collapsing into Remus's old brown chair.

"Don't call him that," Sirius says in lieu of an answer. Right now, he feels like he doesn't know anything, let alone whether Remus is okay or if he's ever been okay. Sirius grabs his coat and leaves without telling her goodbye.

- - -

3. end

The building is buried in the heart of Soho where the old industrial warehouses still linger, not yet contemporized from their beige brick and deep China Red woodwork beginnings into something more modern and serviceable.

Sirius stands at the corner of D'Arblay and Wardour, trying to light a cigarette. James stands just behind him, in the shadows of the alley, while he lectures the rookies on how this should go down.

"Don't do anything reckless. Don't even think a spell until you see Sirius or I getting ready to cast. Do not, do not, do not taunt, cajole, or try to say some witty one-liners. We go in, we look around, and we all come out alive. Clear?"

There's a quiet chorus of "yes, Mr. Potter"'s, and Sirius snorts, his breathe coming out in a condensed cloud. The lighter sputters in the late night fog, and Sirius swears as it licks his fingers.

"All set to move in?" James asks, coming up from behind.

With another mumbled "shit," Sirius tosses his unlit cigarette on to the street.

"Let's go."

- - -

"Alohamora," James murmurs, and the rusty iron backdoor clicks open. They push into the grey cement basement, moving quickly and as noiselessly as the ten of them can manage. The rookies clench and unclench their hands, and even Sirius's palms feel sweaty.

They have to go up three flights of stairs before they find anything suspicious, and when they do, the smell of mould and blood makes Sirius's nose tickle. One of the rookies shoulders open the second floor door, and they burst into a flat, high-ceilinged room. Three men and a woman turn to face them, wands already drawn. In the shadows near their feet, Sirius can see a mound fabric and limbs.

James raises his wand. "We're with the Ministry of Magic " he shouts. "Put down your wands and surrender for questioning."

The tallest man smirks. "For the Dark Lord!" he barks at the others, leveling his wand at the rookie in the front. "Avada Kedavra!"

Green light erupts like the flash of a camera, and then all hell breaks loose.

- - -

In the end, one of the rookies is dead, her face frozen in mid-cry and not a mark on her body. The tall man and the woman Deatheaters are dead as well, and the other two are being held in binding spells.

"Any idea who these two are?" James asks, stuffing his wand into his back pocket and getting to his knees near the dead woman.

Sirius recognizes the faces now that their stationary, relaxed like their mugshots.

"He's Nigel Garside, and she's Olivia Pelham," he says, and his stomach twists like its trying to close in on itself or turn inside out or something.

He looks at the where the mound of bodies used to be and then to the left side of the room where three of the rookies have laid out them in rows. There are five in all.

"They're all Deatheaters," says one of the rookies, the sandy-haired kid named Salisbury. "Each one has the mark." He frowns at the body nearest him. "Why would they kill their own men?"

James places a hand on Sirius's shoulder, but Sirius shrugs it off and walks over to Salisbury and the others. He's known pretty much since he walked in what he was going to find. Some sort of ESP or Black intuition must have kicked in and told him, so he has already decided that he's not going to care when he sees Regulus dead.

But when Sirius stands over his brother's body, too pale, too blank, his stomach feels empty and painful. He collapses to his knees on the rough wood floor and starts to vomit.

"Leave him alone," James tells Salisbury quietly.

- - -

Remus opens the door on something like the twelfth knock. He expects to see Ophelia - who's name, it turns out, is actually Emily - because she went home to visit her relatives and forgot the key Sirius had had made for her.

Instead, he finds Sirius, half-collapsed against the door frame, looking pale and broken. The first thing Remus thinks is that something went wrong tonight, and Sirius is bleeding or dying or both. But then he picks up the smell of beer and realizes that Sirius has a bottle of Samuel Smith in his hand, and he remembers to breath again.

Sirius looks at him and blinks, not quite focusing properly. "I'm not actually drunk," he says helpfully.

For a moment, Remus thinks he'll close the door and let Emily deal with this when she gets home, but he doesn't think it for very long. With one hand, he pushes the door all the way open, and with the other, he grabs Sirius by an elbow and guides him into the apartment.

"Why are you drunk, Padfoot? Did...something happen to James?"

Sirius shakes his head back and forth, wild ponytail flicking the back of Remus's neck. "Nope, Prongs is...is just fine. The bastard. What was he thinking doing dumb things like that?"

They get to the couch, and Sirius tries to sit down but ends up missing and sitting heavily on the floor. Remus would laugh in any other situation, but in this one, he simply sits down on the floor next to Sirius and says, "James did something stupid?"

Sirius shakes his head again and gestures with his half empty bottle. "No, no, no. Regulus did."

"Oh. I didn't know you were looking for Regulus."

Suddenly, Sirius's mopping during these last few months and the weird work hours he's been keeping make sense.

"Yeah..." Sirius frowns at his knees. "I don't know why I didn't tell you that." He looks perplexed and then he raises the bottle to his mouth and drains the last of it. When the last drop is gone, he wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his coat and frowns again. "He's dead now, so I guess it doesn't matter."

And now Sirius coming home drunk at one in the morning makes sense too.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Sirius says quietly and then without warning, he leans forward and kisses Remus.

- - -

Sirius has never been one for epiphanies, but with his wet mouth to Remus's firmly closed and stubbornly dry one, Sirius isn't sure of a whole lot except that this is right and that their entire history - all the bad stuff and the good stuff too and the arguments and the days when Remus would mark papers in his chair and every last thing Sirius has done to make Remus happy or sad, every last bit of it - has been leading to this.

When they stop kissing, Remus is either going to punch him or kiss him, and Sirius really hopes it's the latter and not the former. But even if it's the former, he's resolved not to be too upset because with a dead brother and world that feels like it stopped making sense a decade ago, Sirius is only really sure about one thing and that is that for however much he has always wanted Remus, Remus wants him back. Because they're Sirius and Remus, with an emphasis on the and.

When Remus pushes him away, Sirius braces to take a blow to the gut, but all Remus does is stare with eyes as dark as charcoal in the dim lighting of the flat. He must have been sleeping when Sirius started banging on the door because the only light comes from the hallway and the competing glow of the moon and the streetlights through the window.
"What?" Sirius says eventually, when looking at Remus's blank face has started to make his chest hurt again.

Remus exhales slowly and shuts his eyes. "Go to bed, Sirius."

"Remus," Sirius begins to say, but Remus is getting to his feet and turning away towards the hallway.

"I'm too tired to deal with this now, ok? Go to bed."

Sirius sits in the dark, playing with his empty beer bottle, for a little while after Remus is gone. Then, he heaves himself to his feet and starts down the hall to Remus's room.

He's not drunk. He's mourning for Regulus which is entirely different. And before anything else happens tonight, he needs to make sure Remus understands that.

- - -

Remus closes his bedroom door and leans back against it so that the base of his skull rests against the wood and the doorhandle presses against his spine.

This is...confusing. In the back of his mind, Remus has always assumed that one day he and Sirius would kiss and then Sirius would hate him. But the thing is that no matter how many variations on the same theme have run through Remus's head at one time or another, they've all started the exact same way. Namely, he is the one who kisses Sirius and not the other way around.

What happens now, if anything happens now, is too unreal a situation for Remus Lupin to even hypothesize about. Maybe he should pretend like it's something to laugh off? Maybe Sirius will pretend it never happened...

There's a knock at the door. Sirius is knocking on his bedroom door, and it makes the wood shake against Remus's head.

"Moony," says Sirius, and his voice is so clear that he must be standing with his mouth almost pressed against the door.

"Go to bed," Remus says again when he's found his voice and his chest has stopped trying to pull apart in a thousand directions at once.

Sirius is quiet for so long that Remus almost thinks he has gone to bed, but then he hears a little sigh, and Sirius says: "C'mon, Remus. Let me in."

Remus knows that, if he wanted to, he could say no, but he doesn't want. He's never wanted to, and this time he decides that things are messed up enough that maybe he should just do what he wants. It can't turn out any worse.

When he opens the door, Sirius looks a little shocked, like he hadn't expected Remus to agree so quickly...or at all. Remus leans against the side of the door, blocking Sirius off from the room. As long as Remus is on the inside and Sirius is on the outside, there's still a good amount of space between them.

"What?" Remus snaps when Sirius has been watching him wordlessly for long enough that it could almost qualify as staring.

"You ran away before I could explain," Sirius says, almost a whisper.

"There isn't much to explain. You're upset because of Regulus and looking for someone to make it go away."

Sirius frowns at his feet. "What's wrong with that?" he asks quietly.

Part of Remus thinks that there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, most of Remus is in agreement that making it go away is exactly what he should be doing now, but the part of Remus that's kept its eye on the stream of girlfriends that come and go carries a veto, and it's reminding all the other parts that this will end with Remus used until he's empty. Because that's just what love is to a Black.

"I'm not that guy," he tells Sirius and hates himself for every syllable.

Sirius looks like he's been punched across the face, and for that split-second moment when Sirius is looking vulnerable, Remus wants nothing better than to grab him, drag him to bed, and give up on consequences.

And then Sirius kisses him again, tasting like bitter ale, and Remus remembers why this seemed like taking advantage. He starts to push back when a smooth hand slides against his neck, stops him, and holds him still. Sirius has always had such soft hands and such long fingers - a pianist's fingers, Remus has thought on more than one occasion.

When Sirius opens his mouth to speak, he is very close - so close that his lips just barely miss Remus's as they part. After so many years of just barely missing, Remus is about ready to give up. He'd refuse to look at Sirius's eyes right now if it wasn't for the fact that the only other alternative is to look at his mouth. So, he tilts his head to the side and looks up out of the corners of his eyes.

And Sirius's eyes are grey, grey, grey like the sky before it rains or like the silver charms that dangle in the shop windows to keep people like Remus at bay.

"I don't want you to be that guy," Sirius says roughly, and his hand on the back of Remus's neck is shaking just a little.

Since they first met, Remus has always had Sirius figured out. James and Peter and Lily and girls in general have always left him bewildered, but Sirius... Sirius has always been the solid, substantial, comprehensible part of Remus's world. So when Sirius says that he doesn't want Remus to be that guy, Remus hears the "because you're more" part as loudly as if it were said aloud, and he feels like his heart's been broken and healed in one motion.

He wraps his hands in Sirius's shirt and pulls him forward. This time, it's for real. His lips spread out, pushing at Sirius's, and from the inside, Sirius's mouth is warm and wet and slippery and soft under Remus's tongue.

At first, Sirius's fingers still rest gingerly on the nape of Remus's neck, but slowly, they drift back over the rise of Remus's shoulder to rub against Remus's shirt just along the raised line of his collarbone.

"This is real," Sirius murmurs into Remus's mouth, somewhere between question, promise, and prayer.

Remus slides his mouth away and kiss Sirius on the jawline. "More or less," he says.

"How long have-" Sirius begins to say but cuts off when Remus tangles his fingers in the v of Sirius's shirt, where the first button is already undone and butterscotch skin shows through.

"Shut up, Sirius."

Sirius grins and leans forward to breath an "aye, aye" against the muscles of Remus's throat in a way that makes him shiver.

And then Remus is pulling him backwards to the little futon bed under the window, and Sirius hands are slipping over Remus's bare shoulders to push his shirt off and to the floor.

When Remus is sitting, legs spread across Sirius's hips, one hand resting on the flat, quivering plane of Sirius's stomach just above the bellybutton, and Sirius has buried his mouth, nose, face into Remus's hair, Remus hears him whisper something that would have seemed very nearly impossible before but now just seems right.

"I love you. I do. God, I do. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

After that, the rest of the details blur like rainlines on a window.

- - -

In the half-dark, Sirius fumbles around on the bedside table for his cigarettes before remembering that he isn't in his own room anymore. Just by his elbow, Remus shifts and opens his perfect amber eyes.

"Looking for something?" he asks in that half-sleepy, contented voice that Sirius has only heard before from girls he's fucked. Now, he's hearing it from a guy he's fucked, and Sirius figures that the shiver which courses through his spine probably has more to do with the fact that the guy is Remus than that the guy is a guy.

"Cigarettes? Got any?"

Remus chuckles in a way that just borders on smug. "I think I'll say no and save you from a potentially fatal cliche."

"Pfft " Sirius blows hair out his eyes and glares at his... his... Remus. "You're just using the fact that I'm too comfortable to get up to be mean."

Remus grins, wide enough that his long canines, usually carefully concealed, flash in the dark.

"We should quit, permanently," he says, stretching in a way that makes the covers draw against the lines of his body.

"Tomorrow," says Sirius, "or the day after."

Because there will be a day after and then a day after that. Sirius can see this being forever sort of thing, and when he tells Remus that, Remus just laughs in the back of his throat and mutters something about not wanting to be saddled with Sirius forever.

But, after taking so many years to finally get here, Sirius knows that nothing less than forever is going to cut it.

[09/01/05: Now with added grammar!]