Chapter Text
June 8, 1998
The frayed edges of the black curtain flutter: low whispers, like wind through long grass, snake through the cold stone room: and Remus Lupin stands before the veil, contemplating death.
He is chilled to the bone in this sterile chamber, with its high ceilings and long downward slope of benches like rows in an amphitheater, like the waiting seats of an ancient tribunal. Impossible not to feel, when standing in the center of the circle at the bottom, as if a hundred invisible eyes are pinning him in place. A hundred silent judges, ready to pronounce their sentence. But the whispers: those come from behind the veil.
Those ghosts are real.
Impossible not to imagine that amongst the whispers, there is one whose voice he recognizes.
Remus steps onto the dais. He can feel the hypnotic pull of the stone archway, tugging somewhere deep in his chest. There’s a magic to it, this sensation, a power external to him that is wrapping his brain in a soft, warm haze, lowering his defenses until it seems like the easiest, the safest, the best thing to simply step forward, through the veil.
But Remus, more than most people, knows the difference between an alien hunger overtaking his mind and a hunger that comes from inside himself; so he knows that it isn’t only the veil’s magnetic pull that is drawing him close.
What if, he thinks, death isn’t the end?
January 1, 1979
Cold air was coming in through the window frames.
“They’re shut,” Sirius said indignantly. “They’re shut and locked, and look, I can still see the curtains moving.”
Remus shifted himself up, pulling the blanket with him, not wanting to lose the wrapped-tight oven-hot warmth of the little cocoon he’d made around his body. Sirius, in his crossness, had abandoned any such attempt at fending off the cold and was sitting bolt upright in the bed, chest bare, goosebumps prickling along his arms. Remus looked at the curtains. They were indeed lifting gently away from the windowpanes.
“A draught must be coming through the edges of the glass,” he said. “The panes must not be flush against the wood.”
“Outrageous,” Sirius said. “Criminal. It’s below freezing outside. And in here.”
“We’ll get some caulk,” Remus suggested. “Tomorrow, when the shops are open.”
“We’ll get some what? ”
“Some caulk,” Remus replied, and then, at Sirius’ salacious grin, “oh. You arsehole.”
“I know where to find some—”
“Hey!” Remus yelped. “Your fingers are freezing.”
“So warm me up.”
“What a line,” said Remus, laughing. “My god.”
Sirius threw back the covers and replaced them with his own body. He straddled Remus, settling almost-too-heavy on Remus’ thighs, a solid, comforting weight that tripped the same switches in Remus’ brain as the swaddled blanket had. Something went quieter inside him, muffled, soothed by the sensation of being constricted, wrapped up tight.
Sirius nudged a finger against Remus’ nipple.
“Happy New Year,” he said, and bent to kiss it, his tongue flicking out to touch, just briefly, the brown nub. He ran his nose lightly over Remus’ chest, and Remus breathed, eyelids fluttering.
“I’m meeting James later,” Sirius murmured against his skin. “Taking the motorbike to Suffolk to see the Prewetts.”
“Better you than me,” Remus answered breathlessly, his fingers closing lightly around the nape of Sirius’ neck. “That thing’s a death trap.”
“You always say that.” Sirius bit gently along Remus’ collarbone, teeth scraping just enough to sting. Remus wriggled slightly, caught, pinned down by the weight of Sirius on his legs. “But it’s never hurt anyone before.”
“Patently untrue. The first time you took it up, it crashed in a field. You had bruises for weeks.”
“Early days. Forgiven and forgotten,” Sirius said, waving a dismissive hand. Then he pressed his fingers into Remus’ shoulder, voice going soft. “Would you like a bruise?”
Blood rushed to Remus’ groin. Sirius looked down, between Remus’ legs, and pressed harder.
“I, erm.” Remus swallowed, a little light-headed. “Can we…can you…”
“Yeah?” Sirius murmured, bending over him to lick at his earlobe, to slide his tongue over the soft rim of his ear. “What do you want, Moony?”
Remus writhed. He put his fingers wordlessly, helplessly, in Sirius’ long dark hair. “I…I don’t…”
“Do you know what you want?” Sirius’s body bowed over his, Remus flat on his back, looking up into Sirius’ dark eyes. Pinned, in more than one way.
Sprawling on a pin—
Remus flushed.
“Oh,” Sirius said, sitting back on his haunches. “There. What was that?”
Remus, cheeks going uncomfortably warm, tried to look away. Sirius took his chin firmly in his hand and stopped him. Remus fought the urge to close his eyes.
“Something you want?”
Remus’ tongue felt hot and heavy in his mouth. The words poured into his brain—and I have known the eyes already, known them all—no dam to stop them up. And with them—the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase—a sensation of being pressed, pressed in, hemmed—and when I am formulated—wrapped up tight—sprawling on a pin—and—and exposed, caught—when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall —
And he was hard, achingly, blindingly aroused. Sirius’s weight on his legs and eyes on his face and the hot nauseous lining of embarrassment in his stomach, words stopped up by his swollen tongue but ricocheting around his mind—and Sirius—Sirius, there, real, solid, anchored to the bed and the moment and Remus only half-present, ashamed, bulged, bloated, distended by the chant-like lines echoing inside him, eyes that fix you, and by the feelings they swamped him with: pinned.
Sirius trailed fingers gently down Remus’ throat and then placed them against Remus’ closed lips—and then pushed them inside, opening his mouth.
He ran his fingers back along Remus’ tongue, till Remus had to swallow down a gag.
“Tell me,” Sirius said softly, hand still poised at the opening of Remus’ throat. As if he could pull the words up himself.
Remus tried to string together an explanation and more embarrassment prickled down his spine. He swallowed, spit pooling in the corners of his mouth, and Sirius removed his fingers, but rested them lightly on Remus’ lips.
“Just a stupid Muggle poem,” Remus muttered.
“Tell me,” Sirius said again.
Remus shook his head.
“Close your eyes, if you need to.”
Remus took a deep breath, Sirius’ fingers still wet on his mouth, and shut his eyes.
“And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?”
Halfway through this recitation Sirius slid his other hand down to grasp Remus’ prick.
“Pinned and wriggling?” he said softly, when Remus finished speaking.
Remus, flushed with arousal and shut-eyed close-hot shame, nodded.
“Open your eyes, love,” Sirius said, and the endearment sent Remus’ eyelids shooting upwards. Sirius worked his hand steadily, soothingly, between his legs. Remus tipped his head back, moaning, but didn’t break Sirius’ unblinking gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured after a moment.
“Don’t.” Sirius’s thumb slipped over the head of Remus’ cock. Remus inhaled sharply. “Don’t apologize. I forbid you from apologizing.” Hesitation rose up in his face. “Is that—can I—?”
Remus nodded quickly. “Yeah. Yes. But—”
Sirius leaned in close and bit his lip. “You’re not allowed.”
Arousal crested low in Remus’ belly, knocking the breath from his lungs, and he writhed, wriggled, under Sirius’ weight.
Pinned.
When he came it was long and slow, a luxurious wave of sensation that went on till it passed from something to be savored to something to be endured. Remus rode it out, gasping, back arching against the mattress—Sirius’ eyes fixed on his face for every drawn-out, endless second.
“My legs are asleep,” he managed, finally, to wheeze, after several catatonic minutes of lying winded on his back with Sirius stroking his heaving chest.
Sirius snorted and rolled over. Immediately, Remus nestled up next to him, pulling the blankets over them both.
“It’s a furnace in here,” Sirius complained, but he was smiling.
“I thought you were too cold.” Remus’ mouth moved against Sirius’ skin, forehead resting on his shoulder. He ran his fingers in vague loops across his side.
“That was several lines of verse ago.”
Remus went quiet, fingers stilling.
“Hey,” Sirius said. “It’s all right. You know it’s all right.”
Remus shut his eyes.
“What was that last bit?” Sirius asked after a moment. “The end of—days or something?”
“And how should I begin / To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? ”
Sirius was silent. “Do you think,” he said eventually, “that these are the butt-ends of our days and ways?”
It was New Year’s Day of 1979: darkness was wrapping itself around the world, and cold air was blowing through the cracks in their window frames, and Sirius Black had one furnace-hot hand resting on Remus’ naked hip; and how could Remus presume to answer that question?
February 18, 1996
Every Order meeting seemed to end in a fight these days, with Sirius exploding and Mad-Eye yelling back, Arthur Weasley conciliating and Minerva sharp and Nymphadora Tonks coming in with off-color jokes in an effort to jolt them back into safer waters, and Albus implacable as ever, infuriating even to Remus, who agreed with him but who hated the position he found himself having to take, silent and neutral even though he understood Sirius’ desire to take action and his need to get the hell out of Grimmauld Place. Sirius wanted to do more, wanted to go on the attack, wanted to stop waiting for Voldemort to come out in the open before they began their offensive. Remus got where he was coming from but he’d have done almost anything to stop Sirius being arrested again; and the shouting gave him a headache.
Today had been particularly bad. Sometimes when the others left, Remus could calm Sirius with a hand on his chest or distract him with a hand between his legs, but today he found himself cleaning up shattered teacups in the kitchen while Sirius stormed off to fume somewhere on his own.
But when Remus finished, he couldn’t find Sirius anywhere.
He was calm as he checked the basement, worried after he’d covered the first floor, and alarmed by the time he’d reached the end of the second.
“Sirius,” he called out, yet again, hands clammy, heart racing, and muttered, “oh, fuck, fuck,” under his breath, then shouted, “Sirius, you’d better still be in this fucking house—”
He looked into every room on the third floor twice, stirring up great clouds of dust; coughing, sneezing, he cursed Sirius, the bastard, oh, god, what if he’d gone to do something reckless, what if he got caught—
Or what if he was just gone?
“You areshole,” Remus muttered, eyes pricking. “You selfish—”
Wait .
Remus ground to a halt. A memory, half-formed, was poking at the back of his brain. Sirius had used to owl him letters from Grimmauld Place, sometimes, over the summer holidays—random, infrequent missives out of the blue that had sent him into a tizzy for days—I’m writing from my secret hiding place, my mum will be furious when she can’t find me, serves her right after what she said at dinner—
Remus hurried toward the end of the corridor, and the big diamond-paned window with the big iron latch.
The latch had already been thrown open. Remus pushed on the glass and the window swung outward, letting a gust of chill winter air into the house. Remus stuck his head out, surveying the outer walls. Sure enough, a series of metal bars—decorative in appearance, but forming the carefully concealed rungs of a ladder—stretched upwards, toward the roof.
Remus glanced down at the ground below, a brown patch of grass three stories away, then swung himself out the window. The cold bars stung his hands. Finally, his head rose above the edge of the roof, and there he was: Sirius Black, stretched out on the shingles, staring into the grey sky.
He looked at Remus, but said nothing.
Remus looked back.
Then he climbed back down into the house.
Several minutes later and a little bit calmer, he returned up the ladder, a large mug of hot cider clutched carefully in one hand.
He hoisted himself up. Grimmauld Place was attached to the houses on either side, but its roof rose above theirs, a peaked, shingled slope at just enough of an angle to require caution. Gingerly, Remus picked his way over to Sirius and sat. He offered Sirius the cider.
Sirius shook his head.
“It’s got Firewhiskey in it,” Remus said.
He could see the moment Sirius softened slightly: his jaw unclenching, his shoulders inching downward. He took the mug and sipped.
Any concession from Sirius these days was a victory. Since Christmas, he’d been stalking around Grimmauld Place glaring at all the windows and doors like they were personally responsible for his being shut up there. If he’d directed all his anger towards wood and glass they might have managed, but Sirius had always been more like a tidal wave or uncontained fire than any sort of focused destruction and for months now Remus had been bearing the brunt of his overflowing resentment. He was exhausted, and really the only thing that made him feel better was that he suspected Sirius was exhausting himself, too.
Sirius handed the mug back to Remus, and Remus took a drink.
“Apparently Harry took a girl to Hogsmeade for Valentine’s Day.”
It was a clear conversational peace offering but Remus, unable to help himself, looked sharply at Sirius. “How do you—”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t been sending him owls.” There was a bitter edge to his voice when he said, “I got it thirdhand, as I get everything about Harry these days. Tonks heard from Rosmerta, who heard it from Eleanor Puddifoot.”
“He took this girl to Madam Puddifoot’s?”
“So I heard.”
“My god,” said Remus, appalled, “why on earth would he do that?”
Sirius shrugged. “Girls are supposed to like that sort of thing, aren’t they? Doilies, too much pink. Tiny tea cakes.”
“Oh, an expert, are you?” Remus said, and risked a smile.
But Sirius looked away, frowning. He took another drink and Remus picked at a piece of lint on the knee of his trousers.
“Did she say who the girl was?”
“No.”
Remus nodded. He tipped his head back and stared up into the grey sky, letting its vastness swallow up a little bit of his hurt. In his head he knew that Sirius wasn’t angry with him, but at times it was very difficult to remain convinced of this. The barbs in Sirius’ voice were sharp. He wanted to remind him that they were on the same side, that they always had been, that in fact Remus was possibly the last person in the world who was completely and totally for Sirius; but he was afraid that Sirius didn’t quite believe this anymore, would, like a dog (and Remus felt guilty for the comparison) only recognize loyalty when it took the immediate form of instant gratification. Give me a bone. Let me outside. Remus couldn’t bring himself to support Sirius’ desires to “fuck Albus Dumbledore and fuck the Order and just get the fuck out of here for one single night.” He bore the memory of twelve lonely years too deep in his bones to take that risk. Of course, Sirius did too. That was why he wanted out.
“She left in tears, though. Harry’s date.”
“Oh,” said Remus. “Oh, no.”
“This summer,” Sirius said, “I’m giving him lessons.”
“Lessons?”
“On ‘How Not to Make your Date Cry.’”
Remus laughed.
“‘How to Choose a Proper Date Location.’” Sirius drummed his fingers on the roof tiles. “‘When to Go in for the First Snog.’”
“As a former Hogwarts professor, I’m not sure I can condone this. Considering your track record.”
“My track record?”
“I don’t want you encouraging half-baked gropes in the Hogwarts library after hours,” Remus said.
Sirius grinned at him, yellowed teeth bared in real warmth, and Remus felt the chill of the winter air recede slightly. He scooted closer to Sirius, hip nudging comfortably against his.
“It wasn’t half-baked,” Sirius said.
Remus snorted. “You planned to kiss me that night, did you? That was, what, right on schedule?”
“I wanted to kiss you. I didn’t plan it.” He dipped his head and put his lips on Remus’ neck. His nose was cold. Remus sucked in a breath.
“There’s no schedule,” Sirius murmured. “There never has been. Just wanting you.”
No schedule. Yes. And a good thing too, thought Remus, because by any possible reckoning, their timeline, their life chronologies, had been well and truly fucked a number of times over. It was in fact nothing short of incredible that they had managed to work themselves back to this place, sitting shoulder to shoulder again, even if they had had to go back to Sirius’ horrible childhood home to do so, even if they were trapped in some sort of agonizing stasis, preparing for another war that reminded Remus so much of the first one.
He felt Sirius draw back, just a little, and looked at him with trepidation, worried that he was receding into his anger again. But Sirius’ face looked uncharacteristically hesitant.
“What is it?”
Sirius looked into the half-full mug of cider but didn’t take a drink. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He darted a quick look at Remus, whose stomach turned over uneasily.
“We’ll have to tell him sooner or later.”
Remus, for a moment, didn’t understand.
“He’s dating, himself, now. He’s old enough to know.”
Abruptly, Remus turned his head away.
“Surely everyone has a gay uncle these days,” Sirius said. There was a pleading note in his voice that Remus would have put down to purposeful manipulation if it had been just slightly easier to detect. “He’ll have two. More or less.”
“It’s just,” Remus began, and he saw Sirius’ fingers clench. Guilt washed sour through his stomach.
He guessed that Sirius thought he’d been refusing to entertain the subject since they’d started things up again. It wasn’t true. Remus had thought and thought and thought about it, about telling Harry, about letting Sirius tell Harry. About telling Molly and Arthur Weasley, Albus, Minerva, Ted and Andromeda Tonks. Mundungus Fletcher. The barman at the local. Strangers on the street. He had thought about simply slipping his hand into Sirius’ at the dinner table and waiting till everyone noticed. He had thought about kissing him at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
It was just that Harry looked so much like James.
Remus pushed that aside, pushed aside that particular memory, and let himself flip through the gallery of other anxieties he viewed sometimes behind his closed eyelids at night. As a sort of penance, he landed on one that cut particularly deep, a bruise below his skin. He’d never said it aloud before.
“He’ll ask us if we’re ill.”
Sirius, unexpectedly, gave a derisive snort, and for a moment Remus was stung. “I think he’s smart enough to know being bent isn’t a disease, whatever shit his Muggle relatives shoved into his head growing up.”
Oh. Remus pressed his forehead gently against his knees. He was feeling the cold again, biting through his worn sweater. “That’s not what I meant.”
For a second Sirius frowned at him. Then his face went quite blank. In a flat tone, he said, “Hard to contract HIV in Azkaban.” He lay back, away from Remus, speaking up into the gray sky. “Or when you’re being unaccountably faithful for thirteen years to a man you believe is a murderer.”
Remus’ breath caught. He turned his head away, mastering the tears that swam suddenly at the corners of his eyes.
“You can be very cruel these days, Sirius,” he said quietly.
After a long silence, Sirius reached rapidly down and grabbed Remus’ hand. He squeezed.
Remus couldn’t bring himself to squeeze back.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Sirius said softly. “I was in prison. You didn’t have to be.”
Startled, involuntary, Remus’ head turned; he sat up; he looked down at Sirius full in the face, eyes wide.
“I…”
It was one of those moments: when Remus was hit full-on, blindsided, by the force of realization that once again a person he felt as close to as the tender insides of his elbows or the brush of eyelashes against his cheeks didn’t know: didn’t know all of him, the landscape of his mind and heart, the crisscrossing byways and valleys and hollows of what he had thought and felt and wanted: because he hadn’t told them.
“It wasn’t like that,” Remus said, inadequately, horribly. “It—I wasn’t—”
Punishing myself, he wanted to say, except in the ways that he was; in prison, except all those days he locked his door and refused to step outside; purposely avoiding sleeping with anyone else—but—that was true, only not entirely.
The thing was, and how awful to even think of admitting this to Sirius, there were pleasures, too. His own close company; his own hands on his body. Intimacies he couldn’t articulate. Worlds of open space, in his tiny rooms, his claustrophobic surroundings. He had passed twelve undeniably narrow years. And yet.
“You’re doing it,” Sirius said quietly. “Drifting away.”
Remus, feeling choked, nodded a little and his fingers spasmed, squeezing Sirius’ hand, finally. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“But I am sorry.”
“I can’t follow you into your head,” Sirius said after a moment. “That’s all. And I know I’ve been a prick, these last few months. I fucking—believe me, I fucking know that. But all this house is for me, Remus, is an airless box. I can’t—you’re probably looking up at those clouds and—and feeling like you’re up there. Or floating somewhere, right? Escaping into your own head. But I don’t…I can’t. I’m here. This is it. This house, these walls—”
“We can tell him.” Remus let it out in a rush, before he could stop himself. “Harry. You’re right. I’m being selfish.”
Sirius sighed a little and rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “I didn’t mean to bully you. If you’re not ready—”
“No,” Remus answered. “You’re right. Harry’s what—what you have. He should know.”
Remus could tell that Sirius was trying to hide the hope in his voice when he said, “Really?”
Remus nodded, guilty again. “Just…can we tell him in person? Or—or you, if you want to do it—if you want to do it by yourself—”
“No. Together.” Sirius ran his hand through Remus’ hair and kissed him hard. “Idiot. And yeah, in person. Of course.”
“This summer?”
“This summer.”
They huddled up together but the sky was darkening and the wind was picking up.
“Can we go inside?” Remus asked finally, as his teeth started to chatter.
“Yeah,” said Sirius. “Yes, I guess we should.”