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They were running, breathless, laughter bubbling in their throats, limbs swinging awkwardly and occasionally bumping into each other, barely breathing through lips twisted in mirth and eyes narrowed, almost closed with laughter. None of the sounds of their footsteps reached Remus ; to be perfectly honest, not much other than his heart pounding ferociously in his ribcage, the gasp of a laughter he couldn’t hold back for too long to remember, and the bright, bouncing burst of SIrius’ trademark laughter.
Except, to be completely honest, it should be pointed out that right now, the only thing Remus was really paying attention to wasn’t the muffled exclamations echoing behind them, nor really the path Sirius was pushing him toward, shoulder to shoulder in a corridor he didn’t bother to recognize, a burning heat that always forced Remus to push his own limits, but that booming laughter.
Although Sirius's laughter wasn't exactly booming either. Nor was it exactly warm. That was the effect it had on Remus, yes ; bursting his soul, or perhaps warming it, or perhaps simply melting it, making it take the form Sirius deemed right, because Remus really wasn't much without Sirius by his side, neither really brave nor particularly brilliant himself ; unlike stars, the moon needed light to reflect off other bodies.
So Sirius's laughter wasn't actually booming with light. It was bright in a sharp kind of way, rather. Anyone who got close enough to Sirius to hear him burst out laughing, melting out laughing, would be unable to do anything but try to cut themselves again.
This was why Sirius didn't get attached to people, and why other people didn't get too close to Sirius. Because the reflection of the sun on the shards was beautiful and colorful, and the dancing stars were fascinating to admire from a distance, but as they got closer, as they tried to glimpse something beyond, most people realized that, in the end, a star is nothing but a dying orb.
Even beautiful things could break ; and the cut really never went away. Most people, the unbroken, brand-new children who wandered the halls of Hogwarts, were afraid of broken things; because they cut, yes, and the sight of their own blood makes them think of their death. So they saw Sirius from afar, thought he's fucking cool, gorgeous, handsome, and didn't dig any deeper. Those who digged deeper cut themselves and turned their backs on Sirius, scowling and hissing at him.
Sirius was aware of this attraction ; he was also painfully aware of the repulsion that usually followed.
Bur Remus wasn’t afraid to bleed. The sight of his aching body is no longer associated with death. Every month, his own limbs tried to kill him, and the sight of the crimson liquid he wakes up to each month is now linked to the warm embrace of a body he can no longer stop holding back.
So they were running, and Remus moved a little closer to Sirius, who playfully pushed him in the shoulder, nearly sending him sprawling down a set of stairs they were trying hard to climb four at a time without falling. Neither of them really took the time to hold back their laughter anymore, and the sound of Sirius's made Remus feel warm inside, his cheeks aching from how much he's smiled in just one afternoon.
“I’LL HAVE YOUR ARSE, BLACK!” The shout echoed through the nearly empty corridor behind them, and they hurried twice as fast up the narrow staircase, arriving at the top fast enough to turn around almost simultaneously and gaze at the fuming faces of Crouch and Evan at the beginning of the corridor, their hair both dyed pink and their robes glowing a hideous shade of orange in the dark.
Behind them loomed the shadow of a figure they both knew all too well.
“Filch,” warned Remus.
“Shit.”
“YEAH, RUN ! GO KISS YOUR BOYFRIEND, LUPIN !”
And yeah, they ran, except Remus was losing it, wheezing with laughter, cheeks hurting, the air no longer seeming willing to return to his lungs. They crossed another corridor, the sound of Filch's footsteps getting dangerously closer, Remus having slowed them down considerably. Sirius pushed him into the first cupboard they passed, closing the door just in time for Filch to burst out at the end of the corridor, shouting something about hanging them both by the scruff of their feet.
His face shining with tears of laughter, Remus tried to catch his breath in the cramped space, leaning forward to wrap his arms around his sides, and his forehead rested naturally on Sirius's shoulder, still shaking with a now quieter laughter.
Neither of them brought up the sudden closeness they shared, though both had it on their minds.
The space was black around them, with a single ray of light filtering in from a gap between the two sides of the cupboard doors, sliding across Sirius's face, making the star shine, melting the skin with a white beam, and chiming gray eyes with a glint of mischief and something else Remus didn't bother to analyze.
Except SIrius’ eyes weren’t gray. They weren’t really blue either. The black pupil was surrounded by a color Remus had never been able to put his finger on, a mixture of two settings that called his mind every time he gazed into Sirius’ eyes ; a summer night sky that swirled again and again in the calm silence of an hour when only a few rebellious teens are still awake, and their eyes, looking into the other’s, spoke softly of a grandiose future that awaited them, their hearts filled with hope and smiles ; and the color of a thunderstorm in the deep ocean, the kind of which that those who never went near the coast would only ever be able to see through the filter of a screen, without taking in its whole power, nor admiring their own loss of control when facing it.
Because those are the ones that make you wonder where is the ground and where the horizon ends, those that whispered to you, in their power and the false softness of the waves, that life was worth living, that even in the heart of violence there is a way out ; those were the ones that made the best sky burst when their tumult receded.
“What a lame excuse for an insult,” chuckled Sirius.
Remus looked up at him; his friend, his roommate, his best-bud, and more than anything now, in this small moment when their eyes meet, his first love.
His voice. Remus could listen to nothing but that for thirteen years, and still want more.
“Yeah, even Peter could’ve done better,” he laughed quietly.
“I mean, probably.” He felt more than he saw Sirius shaking his head lightly, strands of peach-perfumed black hair caressing his face ; he chose not to move from Sirius’ shoulder. “I’m quite disappointed by Barty. To be honest, I expected more from him than to call me your boyfriend.”
Remus fully shivered at that. He hadn’t expected Barty to call that from across the corridor, and was rather afraid to think what else he could have imagined.
Except Sirius calling him his boyfriend maybe had something to do with it.
“Maybe something like ‘go shag Lupin in a corner’ would’ve been better,” Remus tried to voice, going with the feel of it.
“You’re still too soft, Moony; ‘go suck him dry’ would be more fitting.”
Remus had to catch his breath for a second, pretty sure his cheeks were burning for another reason than just a laugh. Sirius’s hand was on his shoulder. Was Sirius’s hand on his shoulder since the beginning ? It didn’t matter, because now it was moving down only a few inches, and his thumb started circling just below his collarbone, almost caressing his chest through the fabric of his robes.
Suddenly, Remus felt much warmer and realized, abruptly, how close they both were.
“I’m more of a snogging guy myself,” he heard himself saying.
Both of them stood, legs crossed and touching in the cramped space, their hips only a few movements apart, Remus leaning toward Sirius, his face practically buried in the back of his neck, and the latter's hand coming dangerously close to what felt like a tender caress of Remus's chest.
“Yeah?” asked Sirius in that oh-so-soft tone of voice. “So more of a ‘go snog him like he’s the last breath you’ll ever take in’ kind of guy?”
He pulled a sharp breath in. This is not a mate conversation anymore. “Maybe ‘go capture his lips and bathe in his light’, I’m afraid.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Afraid. Are you really?”
He didn’t have to think twice. “Never with you.”
There it was; the single moment when both of them clearly knew they’d crossed the line. But maybe the line was already long gone, a vague memory of the first few weeks of their friendship, when Remus still fled all forms of life out of fear for himself and others, and Sirius followed him everywhere to force him to be his friend. They still laughed from time to time about those months when both were still children sent into an adult world too soon, desperately searching for bearings in a new space they had yet to explore—and perhaps never will finish discovering.
Sirius’s hand traveled a little lower, and slid over his ribs, over the tender skin that stretched beside his navel, near his hips. “Pull him by the lips and touch him as a sculptor would with his last masterpiece, so,” Sirius added.
Remus’ hand themselves, the traitors, had decided to take the situation in hand. “Take him by the hips and rock him ‘till you’re out of breath and see the stars,” he breathed, fingers delicately running over Sirius’ hips without really daring to touch them, nuzzling instinctively closer to his throat, and Sirius hummed, sending chills through Remus’ spine at the sound.
“Ah. Love him to the moon, then.” Sirius’ second hand unmistakably was on Remus’ neck, playing with the soft short hair growing there.
Remus took a little more confidence, letting his hands wander a little bit further, near his ass. “Isn’t it flying me to the moon?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t care,” Sirius breathed in his ear, hot scent and warm skin.
“What do you care about, then?”
“You.”
Remus lifted his head, and in the half-darkness of the cupboard, he struggled to form the image of Sirius in front of him, his mouth slightly open, muscles tense, eyes fixed on him. He could figure it out, though; their two forms in the dark, noses almost touching, limbs overlapping each other, except Remus’ limbs were not really Remus’ when Sirius was near.
“Sirius,” was all the sounds he successfully voiced. Those two simple syllables he repeated to himself over and over again at night, increasingly breathless and less and less ashamed of waking up hard from a dream about his friend, no longer really a friend, but perhaps a little more now.
“Remus,” Sirius answered.
That’s all he needed to throw caution through the window. “Kiss me.”
And Sirius wasted no time, diving fiercely onto his lips like a starving man, like he’s shagging him in a corner, sucking his dry, like he was the last drop of air he would get, bathing in Remus’s light, seeing stars and loving him to the moon. The kiss was bruising, hungry, ferocious energy that raged against Remus to bend him to his will, and Remus was only too happy to oblige ; he let Sirius plunge his hands between the hems of his robes, unbutton the first few buttons of his too-tight shirt, pressing their two bodies together in a demonstration of want, would, and will.
He let his own hands cup Sirius's bum, feeling him buzz with energy no longer contained, sighing against his lips, his tongue tentatively caressing his lower lip, teasing him, until Remus moved his hands up to his waist and pulled Sirius firmly against him, wrapping his hands around the small of his back and pressing his body against him in an embrace that made Sirius arch his back, sighing against his lips once more, and pressing their pelvises together, making their needy limbs apparent –and, more importantly, tangible.
Remus had thought that by finally doing what he'd dreamed of for months –years, no doubt– his mind would shut down, giving way to his body and their two mouths, turning off all external distractions. But none of that happened ; really, kissing Sirius was more like having a shot injected directly into the brain. Deep down, where all the information was processed, because sharing Sirius's burning heat felt more like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Except Remus would make sure it was not the only time.
He felt everything ; every imperfection in Sirius's lips –grinded by stress and nightmares– the rough fabric of their robes, rubbing unpleasantly against his skin and definitely squeezing him too tightly – and above all, imposing in its presence and strength, the feel of Sirius's hands on his body. Despite the scarred tissue and layers of skin, every tiny movement of Sirius's body against him left him speechless, breathless, in greater distress.
His thoughts raced, clashing against each other ; jostling himself, Remus thought at full speed ; what Sirius liked, what he would expect from Remus in their current position, how to please him, the way his own hands tightened around Sirius's toned limbs, and, ah, he mustn't squeeze too hard, it might hurt. The worst thing that could’ve happened now would’ve been to drive Sirius away with too much enthusiasm.
When Remus's hands clenched against his bum, he felt him shiver. A long, powerful tremor that Sirius accentuated with a soft, almost hidden moan that he tried to hold back to himself. And he left Remus tense as a bow, diving deeper into his mouth to reach whatever had produced that sound, burying himself entirely inside Sirius Black, since his body and his heart had agreed that this was where Remus would feel best—and Remus wholeheartedly agreed.
Then Sirius moved even closer to Remus, something Remus wouldn't have thought possible at this point.
With his quick movements –not abrupt; Sirius's movements are quick, to the max, but never abrupt; always filled with a grace that surrounds him like a halo– Sirius brushed his thigh against the bulge in Remus's trousers, who hummed into his mouth. Sirius froze.
Remus too.
Did he do something wrong ?
For less than a second, he thought he might have to detach himself from Sirius, let this burning heat, this grain of light that is Sirius, flow through his fingers. He’d dreamed of this moment more times than he could count. He’d woken up in his dorm, shivering and covered in sweat, his eyes wide and sweat trickling unpleasantly down his back, unable to concentrate on anything other than the sensation of being horribly hard, and the shame of still having the vision of Sirius before his eyes even after he had woken up.
The next second, his fears were extinguished as Sirius's body rippled beneath his hands. The moments that follow are nothing but a flurry of eager hands, sound of breaths smothered by smiles and warm exhales, and little noises that Remus swore to himself he will etch into his memory so he never forgets them, quivering skin, salt forming flowers on the epidermis that he traced with his lips, the pulse of a heart beating in time with his own, limbs shaken by a desire that is finally reciprocal, and two minds that finally mingled, and, like watercolors, blend. Two shades of pigment that intertwined definitively, enveloping each other, the embrace of two lovers united. Remus didn't think anymore. He whispered thoughts in a low voice, offered his body and his heart and his mind and his sanity to Sirius, who welcomed him with open arms, in a nudity that increased by the second, and soon enough the two boys were rubbing themselves against each other, and panting, and shaking, and whispering coherent words only for the two of them in each other's ear before coming out with hands and kisses and sloppy smiles.
When they finally exited the cupboard, Remus wasn't scared.
Because now, Sirius smiled at him as he guided him by the hand, and the natural warmth of his body spread over his hand, his arm, his chest, and settled deep inside his body.
Deep inside his heart.