Archive of Our Own

"It is so, so fucking cold." Sirius shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and bounced on his toes, feeling Remus side-eye him.

"I told you to wear a better jacket than that."

"But I like this jacket!"

"I know you do, but now you're cold so—"

"We're only out here for one minute!"

They were interrupted by the door in front of them swinging wide open.

"Hey guys!"

Sirius shouldered past James with plans to plop himself down in front of the log burner he knew would be roaring in their living room, Remus laughing behind him at his blunt entry. He slid his jacket off and onto the hooks in the hallway, about to head into the warmth when James yelled out 'shoes!'

Both Remus and James ended up in the living room first, courtesy of Sirius' boots taking three times longer to unlace than Remus' converse. Just to rub salt into the wound, they mocked his grumbling as they walked past. When he finally, finally got to the fire, he could feel their amusement radiating off of them.

"Yeah, okay, laugh at the cold guy."

James and Remus responded with chuckled protests, James flinging around his arms like he hadn't just been ribbing Sirius for his dramatics. Remus had made his way to the armchair, legs propped a little to the left the way he did when his hip was bothering him. Sirius would have to remember to make him a hot water bottle when they got back home.

"We all know you can deal with the cold Sirius, I've seen you ice skate on a frozen lake in just your pjs before." Lily walked in, Harry trailing behind her clutching a box of Quality Street. He peeled off the lid and shook it in offering, walking a circle around the room when all three of them stretched a hand out.

Sirius sifted through the chocolates and frowned. "Where are the red ones?"

"I think Remus stole them all yesterday," Harry said with a shrug, and Sirius whipped his head around to glare at the man in question. Remus grinned at him impishly, not a single shred of remorse to be found.

"I can't believe you."

"I can." Both Lily and James chimed in.

"I wanted one, they're the best!"

"Hence why I ate them."

Sirius groaned and stood, going over to Remus and collapsing over his chair in a huff. Remus batted at him when his hair fell into his face, a little laugh escaping, and Sirius lent further into him until he settled. Draped over him like this, diagonal across the chair and hiding Remus from view, he was sure they looked a bit insane. He didn't really want to move though, Remus was surprisingly comfortable, despite his boniness.

The side of the chair started to dig in to his thigh so Sirius shifted onto the armrest, propping his legs up over Remus and making sure he wasn't pressing down where it could hurt his joints.

"You comfy over there?"

Sirius gave a proud grin over at Lily, "extremely so!"

Harry came to rest on the floor by the armchair, leaning against it as he tapped at his phone. Sirius saw a text come through and watched Harry try to hide his smile, immediately opening it to respond.

"What's for tea?" Remus asked and James clapped his hands together.

"No clue, didn't want to cook!"

"Brill, so glad we're functioning adults."

Lily raised an eyebrow. "Are you complaining at having takeout?"

Remus opened his mouth, then closed it again. "No, no I am not."

"Thought so."

A brief discussion later and they were out the door and heading for the chippy at the bottom of the road, Sirius now bundled in one of the Potter's jackets rather than his own. He looked daft, but he wasn't cold.

"Holy shit."

The teenager behind the chip shop counter was staring at them like it was their first day on earth, and they all knew exactly what was coming.

"The Marauders?" Their group channel name was what most people knew them as, with more widespread popularity than their individual videos. "I used to watch you guys like, all the time when I was a kid. Like all the time, my mum tried to ban it from the house."

"Ban it?"

The teenager glanced at Harry as though they were processing him for the first time. "Oh, yeah. I watched them so much my parents got bored of your voices."

"That's weirdly flattering, I think." Lily laughed and the teen reddened.

"Yeah, sorry, I'm being weird."

"No, not at all!" Remus shook his head. "We'll have heard weirder, I promise."

"Really? Like what?"

Remus squinted, then glanced at Sirius. Sirius shook his head. He didn't know which specific incident Remus was talking about but fans got weird sometimes. Those 'sometimes' were approximately never casual conversation material.

"Just trust me on that one."

The teenager laughed, then startled when another guy appeared over his shoulder.

"Mark!" James cheered. Maybe that was a sign they got too much takeaway, when James started to befriend the workers. "Hey man, how are you doing?"

"Good, good. New guy's not causing problems?"

"Oh, no, no, not at all."

James defended them but the teenager was already scrabbling for a pen and asking them for their order, clearly embarrassed, and they silently agreed to end the poor kids suffering and get their food. If they autographed a stray piece of notepad paper then that wasn't anyone's business but them and the teenager's. And Harry's, since he immediately began making fun of them as soon as they stepped in the house.

"You know, some people would find it cool to have a famous dad." James ruffled Harry's hair, somehow making it stick up in even more directions than usual.

"You're not famous!" Harry snorted as he twisted away from James' attack. "You get like, views and stuff, but you're not famous famous."

"Who is 'famous famous'?"

"Zendaya." Harry said, and James thought for a moment before conceding.

"You're right, we're not exactly Zendaya."

"God, I wish." Sirius groaned, then got dragged into the kitchen by the other handle of the takeout bag, Lily having hooked her finger around it and yanked.

"Right, tea. All of you lot, set the table please."

Harry fetched cutlery and Sirius grabbed the plates, Remus already setting out place mats. James offered beer from behind a cupboard door and Remus took one, as did Harry, and Sirius still found that kind of weird. When did that kid stop being ten?

The food was still piping hot when it was piled from greasy paper onto plates, and Sirius burnt the roof of his mouth trying shove a chip in before waiting for them to cool. Lily sighed at him as she passed over the salt and he flipped her off.

"Guys, lets be civil tonight." James raised his eyebrows as though it was a sensible suggestion. Lily lifted her own hand to flip Sirius off in return, and then the other to aim at her husband. Harry and Remus laughed into their food and James collapsed onto the table.

"I get no respect in this household, no respect at all. You're all cruel."

"Chin up old man, your food will go cold."

James lifted his head to gape at his son. "Old man? Old man?"

Harry grinned, unrepentant, and Sirius felt so proud of the boy he'd helped raise.

After they'd finished tea, they shifted back to the living room, Remus returned to his spot in the armchair with Sirius in tow. Harry had vanished back to his room once they'd gotten onto the topic of their channels, citing the conversation as 'boring work stuff', though judging by how eagerly he was texting someone, that may have just been an excuse.

The group of them had noted down a couple of ideas for The Marauders they'd run by Peter later, and James had started on a ramble.

"And— I dunno. I feel like my views are just wack on any non-gaming videos. You think I should do a separate channel?"

Remus seesawed a hand. "Wouldn't that worsen the views, if people don't follow?"

"But I could make my main more consistent, help boost the algorithm, then post stuff that encourages people to go there. I really want to amp up my non-gaming stuff, make it better. Now Harry's mostly away at uni, that should be easier. I can stream the kitchen without worrying about him wandering in for a snack."

"You're copying our baking streams?" Sirius gasped, a hand pressed to his chest. "You're breaking my heart here, Jamie."

"You do not have a monopoly on baking live!"

Sure, that was true, but Remus and Sirius' baking streams had been amassing an insanely large amount of viewers, to the point that they were becoming more beneficial than any of their other stuff despite their platform being built on the back of games. Even so, they kept them rare, since Remus claimed they would lose their 'charm' if done too often.

"We can join you?" Remus offered. "People will watch cause they like our baking stuff, then stay after. It'll bring attention to the new channel."

James whooped. "You guys are the absolute best, please do."

"We will, definitely. It'll be the greatest baking stream of all time." Sirius was beaming at the thought, less so for the numbers and more because getting them all in a baking stream together would be wildly fun.

"Lily, you want to join?" Remus asked her, and she pursed her lips.

"I don't know, that's a lot of time to be spending with the likes of you lot…"

"Oh Lily, come on. You know you want to!" James fixed her with big doe eyes and she shoved a palm over his face, her fingers splayed out over his glasses. She agreed to it as James pulled off his glasses and frowned at the smudges she'd left, taking the offered wipe she'd already fetched from the side table.

"Right then!" Sirius shuffled in his spot, "what are we going to bake?"

The armrest of the chair was no longer as comfortable it had been, and he eyed the gap between it and Remus' side. Remus noticed, of course, and sighed as he slid over as much as he could, exposing a little more space.

"Go on then."

With that permission, Sirius sat himself next to Remus on the armchair, their legs tangling and sides pressed tightly together. There wasn't enough space for two people but they made it work, as the two of them were known to do, and Sirius found himself a little taller than Remus. Taking full advantage, he rested his cheek against Remus' hair, the soft curls tickling his face.

James and Lily were looking at them with a particular expression on their faces that Sirius opted to ignore.

"I was thinking we could make a pie or something. We can do fun patterns on the top."

Lily rested her head in her hands, whispering something indiscernible, and James gave a loud 'oh my god' before laughing at them.

"You two are unbelievable."

"What?" Sirius furrowed his brows, chuckling along with him despite his confusion.

"If only our fans could see you now, there would be twenty new fanfictions by the end of the day."

Sirius felt Remus freeze beneath him.

"Fanfictions?"

"Uh, yeah, look at the two of you!"

Huh. They were admittedly pretty cosy, Remus' arm around Sirius' back and their weight against each other.

"You read a lot of our fanfiction?" Sirius asked, only half joking, and James rolled his eyes.

"I'm not reading it, I just know it exists. The only ones I've read are about me."

The room was still for a moment before it exploded, everyone staring at James with equal expressions of shock and amusement. He took it all with the ease of a man with far too much confidence, cocking his head and nodding.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Crazy right? But hey, it's about me! I was curious."

"And where has that curiosity led you?" Lily asked, sceptical. James suddenly appeared sheepish.

"I mean, some of it was really good. Like, emotional and that."

"And the rest?" Sirius prompted.

James held a finger in the air, looking vaguely worried as he stated, "I have discovered kinks that I did not know were kinks."

That set them all off again, Sirius laughing so hard a stich stabbed at his side.

"I think anything can be a kink, James," Remus said with an audible amusement, and James waved a hand at him.

"Yeah, yeah, I knew that. I just hadn't thought too hard about it! Then I was reading stuff and got a bit too curious and now I know how many people think I want Lily to stab me! Or Sirius, or Remus, or Peter for that matter. There was even one of me and Marlene, though I didn't touch that one." James shuddered, and Sirius could feel the tears leaking from his eyes as he fought for breath.

Lily was in a similar boat, turning a truly spectacular shade of red. She collected herself for just long enough to say, "James, I promise, I would never judge you if you wanted me to stab you," then she was off again, wheezing.

"I do not want you to stab me!" James threw his hands in the air, a reddish tint fading into the brown of his skin and Sirius knew he had to be blushing furiously. "I mean — well — okay. We'll talk about that later, but—"

"You'll talk about it later?" Sirius shrieked, and James waved his hands even faster.

"Okay, this is not what we need to be talking about! I was making a joke about those two, not me! Let's go back to planning the baking stream."

"Oh but Jamie, you've got me interested now. Tell me, where are these magical stories of Lily horny-stabbing you?"

James glared at him with the fury of a thousand suns and sniffed haughtily. "You are a YouTuber. I know for a fact you are aware of fanfiction websites."

Sirius tilted his head in acknowledgement. He did, in fact, know about fanfiction sites, and had just never gone near one. That had been a piece of advice he'd been given near the beginning of the channel, when they'd just started to blow up. While he'd never been bothered by people writing about him and had said as such, seeking it out felt like a questionable idea. If anyone was the king of questionable ideas though, it was James.

"Alright, I know them, and so what?"

"So what?" James aimed an accusatory finger at him. "You're Sirius Black! You've never even checked them out?"

Sirius shook his head slowly, wondering if maybe he should've. Did that seem like a thing he would do?

"Dude, you have some of the biggest ones I think. You knew that, right?"

He'd remained vaguely aware, since being aware of his fandom was a good chunk of his job, but never enough to know the specifics.

"I know a lot of our fans like writing that stuff, I didn't realise it was popular?"

James looked at him with disappointment and even Lily was raising her eyebrows.

"People are writing hundreds of thousands of words about you, and they're getting popular enough that they're on like, the second or third page of the website. When you sort by interactions and stuff, that is."

Sirius' jaw hit the floor. "You're fucking with me."

"I'm not."

"People like them that much?"

James nodded and Sirius gaped. That was insane, genuinely insane. They liked to read about him? His life? Oh god — his sex life. There were people reading about his sex life!

"You good?"

"I'm just processing."

"Haven't we talked about this before?" Remus' voice was quiet, hesitant. "We agreed they were fine."

"Yeah, no, they're fine. I'm fine with them, like actually. I just… I don't think I realised how big they were. But it's fine."

He did mean it. It was undeniably strange to think about, but it didn't make him viscerally uncomfortable or anything. He was just… evaluating.

"You sure?" James was watching him warily. "I can answer questions, if you'd like. I went down one hell of a rabbithole."

"I thought you only read ones about yourself?"

James winced. "Okay, so maybe I had a wider range than I admitted, but not in a weird way! It was research!"

"Okay, go on then. What's the one people love the most? About me."

James took a deep breath in, then exhaled instead of speaking. He glanced at Lily, who gave him a look back, and Sirius shuffled in his seat. He disliked it when he couldn't tell what the two of them were saying to each other, far too used to being included.

Eventually, James turned back to him. "You and Moony. Slow burn romance with a fuck ton of smut at the end." The latter half of the sentence rushed from his mouth like saying it quicker would change its meaning.

Sirius processed that information in a few separate bursts and he was sure his face was shifting with each one.

"Slow burn— me and Moons?"

"Yep."

"With smut."

"Yep."

"Huh." Sirius chewed on his lip. "Is it any good?"

"You think I read the slow burn about my best mates?"

Sirius levelled James with a look and James puffed his cheeks out with a sigh.

"You're right, I did read it. And no, it was kind of over-hyped."

"Fuck. I don't want my fanfiction to be over-hyped!" His complaint sounded stupid, and the snorts from around the room made that fact clear, but come on! Really? Over-hyped? Couldn't his fans do better?

"There are plenty of good ones too! Like there's this author, posts loads but doesn't have any actual social media accounts. Everyone practically worships them, I think they're on like, the second or third page of likes. TheStarsMoon, or something like that."

"That's kinda crazy." Sirius chewed his lip. "How often are we talking?"

James widened his eyes. "Pretty fucking often. Every other week or so? Every week? Sometimes more, depends."

"Exactly how far have you been traversing the fanfiction community of our fandom?" Lily asked with a look of exceptional judgement on her face, and James ducked his head.

"I got fixated."

"I can tell."

"Alright then, let's go back to baking." Remus spoke up, his voice quiet as he determinedly steered the topic onwards. "I like the idea of a pie, but I was going to suggest gingerbread men? I know it's a little after Christmas, but they're always in season, right?"

"Oh, always." Sirius firmly agreed, and James and Lily did the same. James actually spoke, whereas Lily raised a thumbs-up from where she was still trying to collect herself, having slid halfway from the sofa to the floor.

Gingerbread men ending up winning over pies, thanks to a poll they posted online. That alone generated enough hype for them to reach twenty thousand viewers while still on the starting soon screen.

They were set up in the Potter's kitchen now that Harry had headed back off to uni, cameras propped up in three locations for them to switch between at their little laptop setup. They'd also pulled up the chat on Sirius' phone, sat in the middle of the Potter's kitchen island.

Sirius always forgot how posh their kitchen was until he actually had to cook in it and couldn't find a single thing bar the basics. Lily had tried to verbally direct him to a digital scale and he'd opened five different cupboards until she came over and did it herself.

Remus removed the starting soon screen and stepped into frame with the rest of them, chat immediately speeding up.

"Hey guys!" James clapped his hands, voice raised a good couple of decibels as it always did when he was recording. "As the title says, we're baking! If you didn't see the poll, we're doing gingerbread men, thanks to your votes—"

"I still think we should've done pie." Sirius offered, smiling innocently at James' mock irritation at the interruption.

"We can see how it goes, then maybe do pie next stream." Remus said, his voice perfectly neutral. He loved to pretend he was the peacekeeper but Sirius knew just how long those 'chaos Moony' clip compilations were, the scheming bastard.

"Next stream? That's confident."

"Lily, I said we should see how it goes."

She waved a finger in agreement, first at Remus, then the camera. "That goes for you too chat, behave."

Judging by the wave of all-caps messages, Sirius was heavily doubting that they would. He spotted more than a few regular names, alongside plenty of ones he didn't know. These baking streams with him and Remus really were some of the biggest they did, and now Sirius knew about people's apparent obsession with writing long-form stories about them, he had a suspicion as to why. Not a new suspicion, but a growing one.

It started off fine. Or, at least, as fine as the four of them could manage, which meant flour ended up sprinkled over the side and they lost the ginger for a solid five minutes, but by the time they'd finished the dough and wiped the side, everything seemed in order.

James ducked down beneath the kitchen island as Sirius read the chat, joking with them as they insulted the group's baking. He was cut off with a loud slam, jumping enough to stumble into Remus, who steadied him and then laughed.

He stared at James, who had brought out a box of cookie cutters and must've slammed it onto the counter with enough force to kill a man. James smiled at him, wide and insincere, and Sirius turned his deadpan face to the camera as their chat cried with laughter.

"Well, this is going great." Remus muttered, sliding around the two of them to stand by Lily's side and sieve through the cookie cutters, placing any good ones to the side. The standard human shape, stars, circles, pigs, moons, paw-prints, and one particularly crude looking one that turned out to be a rocket ship.

"Are we sure that's a—"

"It's a rocket. Yes, I am sure."

Sirius hummed sceptically.

They rolled the dough out, Lily and Sirius having a mock fight with two rolling pins, though Sirius was at a severe disadvantage due to Lily's being an actual, full size rolling pin and Sirius having the one they bought for an eight-year-old Harry. Sirius still won, attributing it proudly to his childhood cricket games, and Lily hit him over the head with the plastic lid of their flour container.

Once James had wrestled back the rolling pin and finished flattening the dough, they crowded around it.

"Would it be a good idea to cut this into four?" James asked, when they were all pressed elbow to elbow and jostling each other trying to figure out what they were doing.

"Nah, its fine." Sirius said at the same time as Remus went, "Probably."

James side-eyed them, then shot a glance at Lily and reached for a knife. He slid it neatly down the centre and then shuffled half of the dough over to the side, putting the cookie cutters in the centre.

"We'll do it in pairs."

That left Remus and Sirius next to each other, still close, and Sirius was perfectly happy with that.

Lily stole the person shaped cutter first, and James the pig. He held it up to the camera, clicking onto the overhead shot.

"I think it's cute!"

Remus and Sirius had reached for the star and moon respectively, neatly pressing them into the edges of their dough and then sliding them onto the prepared sheet. The shapes sat next to each other, the ends of Remus' star curling a bit and Sirius' crescent moon at a bit of an angle where it had creased in the middle.

"Give us the person." Remus demanded after they'd filled half their sheet with shapes. More stars and moons had joined, as had some paw-prints and a couple of rockets. Sirius had rounded the sort-of pointed top of one while giggling, setting James off while the other two sighed at them, though Sirius had seen Remus hiding a laugh behind his hand.

Lily handed over the 'person' and Remus used the last chunk of their dough to cut out two people.

"It's us!" Sirius grinned, helping carefully transfer them to the sheet.

Remus was already busy again, gathering the scraps of their dough and moulding it into another sheet, thinner this time. He grabbed the smallest star-shaped cutter they had and cut it out, carefully placing it onto the chest of one of the people.

"There, now it's you."

Something in Sirius' chest jolted, and he looked at the moon cutter. It was far too big to actually make something suitable for a gingerbread man, so he grabbed the smallest kitchen knife they had and carved out a smaller moon, working slowly to ensure it was neat. Remus watched him do it with a soft look of surprise which felt slightly insulting. Did he really think Sirius wouldn't reciprocate the gesture?

The moon was slid onto the other gingerbread man, and Sirius stepped back with a content nod. "We're ready to bake ours."

Lily and James placed their final shapes on their sheet — rounded out rockets, Lily laughing, the hypocrite — and they started a timer as they waited for them to cook, washing up and entertaining chat in the meantime.

They seemed incredibly taken by Sirius and Remus' gingerbread men, which was valid, they had been incredibly cute.

When the timer went off, Lily peered into the oven. "I think they're good?"

Oven gloves were retrieved and the trays were taken out, camera firmly in the overhead shot to make sure the stream could see what they had made. And wow, had they made some things.

James' pigs had turned out… interestingly. Their snouts had ballooned in the oven and their tails varied from actual swirls to plain blobs. Everything else had mostly held together, expanding a little but not enough to lose shape.

The Sirius and Remus gingerbread men however, had suffered a little. While their bodies were perfect, their moon and star had sunk and shifted, forming two awkward masses on top of their chests, absolutely no discernible shape to them.

Remus tilted his head, analysing. "We can work with this."

"You think?"

Lily leaned over, "what other option do you have?"

"Point taken."

And so work with them they did.

The Potter's had unearthed a box of baking decorations from their cupboards, meaning that additionally to the little tubes of icing they'd bought, they also had a whole host of sprinkles and sweets to make even more of a mess with.

Sirius went for the first moon that he'd cut out, and Remus did the same with his star. He piped on swirls that ended up sort of wonky, and Remus repeated the star outline a couple of times within his. The finished gingerbread shapes were put on an array of rapidly filling plates, until there were only a few left.

Sirius and Remus squinted at the gingerbread men, then at each other. Remus covered his face with his hands in comedic disbelief and Sirius directed the stream's attention to them.

"Guys? Which gingerbread man is Moons?"

The star and moon had both melded to the people so efficiently that their shapes were indistinct from one another; they genuinely couldn't be told apart. James and Lily came over to stare too, also giving up after a solid ten seconds.

"The left one. That's me." Remus nudged Sirius. "Chat are saying they've looked back. Apparently there were plenty of clips already."

"Plenty of clips?" Sirius asked as he lifted the left one, putting it down in front of himself as Remus did the same with the other.

"I think people liked us making each other."

Sirius made a little 'ah' of understanding and focused on grabbing the yellow icing, fumbling it the first time, much to his chagrin and everyone else's amusement. "Well, lets finish each other then."

Remus made a noise in the back of his throat, taking a tube of grey icing and nearly dropping it, worse than Sirius had.

"Okay, yeah, sure."

Considering how fucked up the moon was, Sirius felt like he did a pretty good job at outlining it, filling it in with an uneven spread of yellow. Yellow was basically gold, right? And gold was Moony's colour, which was kind of funny considering silver's association with the moon, yet warmth complimented him perfectly. Sirius was the one that got silver — as proven by the grey Remus was using to rescue the star on his gingerbread man.

Once he'd finished with the moon, he found a tube of brown and piped little circular squiggles on the top of the gingerbread man's head, to make Remus' curls. The eyes were significantly more difficult and Sirius could see the chat mocking him as the smarties he was using slid out of place no fewer than three times.

Remus, however, had managed the eyes, and was standing with a tube of black in his hands.

The chat had noticed him first, spamming his name and a lot of question marks.

"You good, Moony?" James asked, putting his last pig down onto the plates.

"Yeah, yeah." He frowned. "I have to do Sirius' hair now."

Sirius perked up. "Yeah? That's my best feature! Don't fuck it up."

"That's why I'm nervous! I don't want to!"

Sirius laughed and moved over to beside him, nudging his shoulder and peering over it.

"It's not that hard, I did yours."

Remus was stock still where his shoulder was propping up Sirius' chest, arms braced on the counter. "Yeah well, my hair isn't as nice."

"I like it!" Sirius punctuated the sentence with a light tug at Remus' hair, who gave a single, punched out huff in response. "I do! I think it's pretty."

He glanced up at chat, seeing them race by even quicker. Maybe he should think more about what he does to Remus, considering how they're likely being perceived. Maybe it's also a bit too late in his career to be having a crisis over such things.

One message in chat caught his eye, standing out amongst the flurry of others. 'i could hear the fic writers scream from here'. Sirius didn't know why it had grabbed his attention, but his mind flickered back to what James had been talking about the other day.

He was still close to Remus, even closer than he had realised, and something in him went a bit wobbly. He stepped away so he could do the final details on his Remus gingerbread man — a striped jumper carefully surrounding the moon — and spoke, his voice thankfully not reflecting whatever freak-out his brain had just had.

"Well, if you don't believe me…"

"I believe that you think my hair is nice. But yours is much prettier, so. There's that."

"You think my hair is pretty?"

Remus looked at him with an expression of downright exasperation. "Did you, or did you not just say it's your best feature?"

"That's irrelevant. That's my opinion, not yours."

"And mine matters more?"

"Absolutely."

Remus ducked his head back down to his piping, though he was basically done, and raised his other hand to send Sirius a 'v' sign.

"Fuck you too."

The stream ended with a vote on which gingerbread was the best. After a shockingly compelling campaign from James, citing the 'beauty of pigs even in the face of their perceived dirt', he managed to scrape a win, though Remus and Sirius right behind in a close tie. Lily spent the remainder of the stream reminding the chat that they probably couldn't do better than her and her low ratings were shockingly rude, though Sirius had seen her attempt at at decoration and winced. He loved her very much and her ability to ice cupcakes was impressive, but that had not been a transferable skill to biscuit decorations.

Remus was midway through editing a Minecraft video the four marauders had recorded the previous week and steadily felt like he was losing his mind. There was something cruel and unusual in being best friends with someone like Sirius Black, who flirted like his life depended on it. There was something even crueller about being in love with that friend.

In a good half of the clips they'd interacted in, Sirius had made some flirtatious comment or another, with absolutely no understanding of what he was doing to him. He'd done the same with James and Peter but Remus wasn't blind and could see how it was dialled up around him. There was really something to be said about the consequences of living together — Sirius had grown far too comfortable.

There was that, and there was the fan reaction too. Remus and Sirius' interactions always spiked views and they'd been in the industry for long enough to know to capitalise off of that, no matter how unfortunate it was for Remus. If Sirius flirting with him meant he could buy more books, then would Remus steel himself and dealt with it.

Some times were more egregious than others, like the baking stream from the other day. Tugging on his hair, really? Was Sirius trying to give him a heart attack live on stream? If so, he had very nearly managed.

The door creaked and Sirius walked in, a steaming mug in hand.

"Tea?"

Remus groaned, "you're incredible."

Tea was exactly what he needed, he still had far too much footage to go and felt like he was wading through quicksand with how slow progress was going. Admittedly, some of that was thanks to the clip of Sirius putting their beds next to each other while Remus was outside farming; he had replayed the clip no fewer than twenty times to hear Sirius muffled chuckle as he glanced from chat to the camera.

Sirius placed the mug on the desk then stood behind his chair, leaning against it.

"How much more have you got?"

Remus flipped onto the timeline with all their footage and showed Sirius where the cuts ended, hearing him hiss in sympathy. Then, a weight settled on top his his head and a few strands of black hair fell into his vision. Sirius was resting his head on top of Remus', again.

Great, that was amazing. Super cool, even. Remus was so glad that was becoming a frequent thing.

Remus needed more appreciation for his bravery really, any other man would've perished upon week three of living with Sirius, and yet here he was, years down the line. It was impressive.

Sirius reached out and pointed at a frame in the timeline. "I think that's my favourite bit, there."

"Which bit is that?"

He could feel Sirius' cheeks shifting into a smile. "The bit where I stole your jumper."

Remus felt his heart jump in his chest and rolled his eyes. "Prick."

Remus had taken his armour off and shoved it in a chest so James could enchant it. He'd left for two moments to go and grab an extra mending book, and Sirius had stolen his chestplate and began parading around with it. Unknown to Remus at the time, he'd also gotten up from his chair and then returned to his stream with one of Remus' actual jumpers on, for 'immersion', as he'd worded it.

The footage had been all over social media in minutes and Remus' chat had informed him not long after it happened, just so the flash of emotion on his face could be clipped and plastered everywhere. Fans were invasive, but Remus was self-aware enough to know he was part of the problem in more than one way.

Sirius dropped his hand from the screen. Instead of doing the normal thing and putting it by his side, or back on the chair, it ended up in Remus' hair, twirling a bit of it. Rather embarrassingly, he shivered, and prayed that Sirius didn't notice.

"Your hair is pretty." Sirius said, definitively, and was he really still thinking about that stream? It was Remus was supposed to overthink these things, what the fuck was Sirius doing?

With that last sentence, and one final pull to the curl Sirius had in hand, he said 'goodnight' and wandered from the room. The next time Remus exhaled, his breath trembled, as did his hands where they sat on his desk. Every time Remus thought he had a handle on things, Sirius would do something else diabolical and ruin any progress he had a chance of making.

He went back to editing but his flow was broken, distracted by Sirius and the scenes replaying in his head. Sirius calling him, or rather his hair, pretty. Then he had touched it, pulled at it with all the confidence that made Remus melt, and he was supposed to be fine with that?

He really did try to edit, honestly, but he couldn't go two minutes of either of their povs without finding a clip of Sirius flirting with him. Sometimes it was a blatant joke, and others it had just enough weight to it that it began to sound real, and Remus couldn't do it anymore.

Closing the tab, he stared at his screen, watching his mouse hover. He should go to bed.

But when the screen darkened from lack of activity, he shook his mouse and woke it up, then found himself clicking open a new tab, the kind he always promised he wouldn't touch again. Especially after James the other day, not just mentioning fanfiction, but mentioning TheStarsMoon like that was a casual thing to do.

Hearing his own username from James' mouth had nearly sent him into a spiral. Well, it had sent him into one, he'd spiralled the moment he reached his own bedroom and it was safe to do so, but in the moment all he could do was sit, frozen, until the opportunity arose for him to guide the conversation away from dangerous waters.

Sirius knew his user now, though he'd likely already forgotten. Even so, Remus knew it was an atrocious idea to keep using it, the kind of stupidity that would land him in serious trouble.

And yet, he opened a tab and started typing.

It was a little insane, to have an entire fanfiction account that was full of writing about him and his best friend in a relationship. It got infinitely worse when he acknowledged that half of it was borderline, or fully, porn. But was Remus really to blame?

Yes, yes he was, he was definitely to blame, but Sirius had said, years ago, that he didn't care about what fans did, nor how explicit they got, and Remus had found himself perhaps too comfortable. He didn't belong in that 'fan' category, not that any of his readers knew that, but he needed some sort of outlet for the shit he was being put through by an oblivious Sirius.

It was pretty bad fic this time, even by his standards. Sirius hadn't even pulled that hard but he could still feel his scalp tingling, and his frustration melted into a fanfiction that was downright filthy, and Remus knew he would have to stay in his room the next morning or else he wouldn't be able to look at Sirius for the entirety of breakfast. Still, this outlet was better than ruining their friendship, so Remus resigned himself to his morally questionable decisions.

Remus was searching their cupboards for sauce when Sirius walked in and plopped himself down the stool they kept in there for that specific reason. He wasn't great at cooking, neither of them were, but he was consistent enough with the meals they were used to and pasta was hard to mess up.

After a couple of minutes, a rhythmic tapping began, fingers drumming on the wall.

Remus turned to face him, "you okay?"

He received a hum in return, Sirius' face scrunching. "Yeah, I've been thinking."

"Oh dear." Remus turned back to what he was doing, checking how done the pasta was. "About what?"

"Fanfiction."

He stopped with a piece of pasta halfway to his mouth, then forced himself to eat it when he realised how strangely frozen he'd been. It was far too hot but the burn didn't register through the panic blurring his mind.

That was the kind of sentence Remus heard in his nightmares. Why had his friends latched on to the one part of their fandom that had previously gone unnoticed? Did they really have to do that?

"Fanfiction?" He hoped Sirius wouldn't notice how high-pitched his voice had gone.

"Yeah. I mean, if our fans are big on it, we could read it on stream or in a video? I know other creators have—"

"No."

He rushed to interrupt, he couldn't listen to more of that. He couldn't do that, absolutely not. That would be mortifying at best, and with his stupid, risky hobby, friendship ending at worst. With James having mentioned his account, Sirius would surely want to read those in particular, and while there was no giveaway it was Remus, he knew he would know. They weren't good at keeping secrets from each other, it was a miracle Remus had made it so far. A potential crack in the wall he'd built up could cause it to all come crashing down.

"…No?" Sirius sounded confused and Remus stayed firmly staring at the pot. He didn't know what was written on his face but he was worried it would give him away. He did his best to smooth out any expression he had.

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"Why not? The fans are writing it, why can't we read it? We can skip the explicit stuff."

Why would he bring up the explicit stuff? Why? Remus' face burned and he checked the pasta again. It wasn't quite done but he strained it anyway just for an excuse to avoid conversation. It didn't stop Sirius though, of course.

"Are you not comfortable with that? I mean — you said you were fine with fanfiction when we set boundaries before."

Remus stirred the pasta and sauce in together, trying to seem unbothered.

"I am fine with it, I just don't want to read it. Is that okay with you?"

Despite his efforts, it came out bordering on aggressive, and when he finally locked eyes with Sirius, he was met with a slight offence layered over a puzzled frown.

"I mean, that's fine, but there's no need to be a dick about it?"

"I didn't—" he inhaled carefully. "—I didn't mean to be a dick. It's just one of those things I want away from me. It's fine, I'm not uncomfortable with it existing, I just don't want to deal with reading it."

Sirius nodded slowly, still watching him with piercing eyes. "That makes sense." He took a bowl from Remus' hands and disappeared to their dining room, letting Remus breathe a sigh of relief.

Sirius had believed him, which was good. Lying still left a sour taste in his mouth, guilt tugging at the bottom of his gut as he followed him. He tried to ignore it, he'd dug himself into a hole and simply had to deal. Sirius was better off not knowing anything about Remus' feelings, especially the ones he poured online for their fans to read.

He switched the topic to Harry's phone call earlier and the football society he'd joined at uni, pretending to be unshaken.

Sirius had a growing suspicion that Remus knew more about fanfiction than himself. Their entire interaction that night had been distinctly weird, he could feel panic radiating from Remus as he refused to turn around. It was weird and so unlike the steady comfort the two of them usually held.

Evidently Remus didn't like the idea of reading anything, but Sirius wasn't sure why. He'd thought their feelings on fanfiction had been the same, yet this painted a stark discomfort on Remus' end that felt sudden. He couldn't help but feel like there must've been a reason for it, and now Sirius was staring at his phone and wondering if it was really that bad.

Perhaps Remus had tried reading it before, feeding the curiosity like James, but come out of it with a much worse impression. If so, it made sense for Sirius to avoid it, but he wanted to know and that want was screaming incessantly in the back of his mind. Remus and Sirius weren't the same person, maybe Remus found reading about himself weird, but Sirius might find it fun. He'd always been described as self-obsessed, after all.

He knew how to find it, he did practically live online, and it took less than fifteen minutes for him to figure out the site's mechanics and locate the 'Marauders RPF' page. He stared at it for ten seconds before shrugging and scrolling. He had never been good at self restraint, it was honestly a miracle it had taken him this long to try reading it.

The first one he saw was barely tagged, a short, nothing description and bland title. He glared at his phone, then spent the next five minutes figuring out the filtering settings until he was looking at the most popular fanfictions featuring him.

As James had said, the very top one was tagged with 'Remus/Sirius', with enough words that it made his mind hurt. It was set over the course of twenty-eight years, from the beginning of secondary up until their current ages in some world of magic. Huh.

The next one down was more basic, just one about their 'secret relationship' behind the scenes of their videos. It was sweet, if strange, to see people writing and finding joy in a made-up relationship. He didn't know how many of these people really thought they were dating, since he was aware there was a portion of their fanbase that loved theorising on that particular topic.

The one after that was a 'x reader', which he glanced over for just a second before scrolling. That might take some build-up first.

Then he found that account James had mentioned. TheStarsMoon, having written a fanfiction with over twenty thousand words, all based around him and Remus going to a con and having to share a bed in the hotel.

He clicked on it without thinking too much. Firstly, because James had mentioned them and he trusted his friend too much, and secondly because that was something that really had happened. Two years ago, around the same time the fanfiction was written, they'd shared a hotel room for simplicity, accidentally booking one with a double bed instead of two singles. It hadn't been a big deal and Remus hadn't taken much convincing to keep it, since complaining would've meant potentially bothering staff.

Admittedly, Sirius hadn't been sure of what to expect of fanfiction, but getting invested wouldn't have been his first guess. He felt he'd be more comfortable than Remus, but it took ten minutes for him to realise he hadn't shifted once since he started reading. Hell, he'd barely even blinked.

He read about him and Remus arriving, a comfortable bickering between the two of them, then the realisation when they walked into the room. They'd gotten their characterisation accurate as this version of Sirius encouraged Remus to keep the room too, though with much more of an effect on Remus. They went through the con, dialogue drawn directly from the panels' streams, then returned back to their hotel room with a thick layer of tension hanging over them.

Remus showered first, then read as he laid on the bed.

The bathroom door opened, a puff of steam escaping as Sirius walked out. He was dressed — thank god — but the t-shirt he was wearing slipped beneath his collarbones and the hem was long enough to cover the bottom of his shorts. Remus was not surviving the night.

"I'm beat," Sirius groaned as he collapsed onto the bed, face down in the sheets. Remus swallowed.

"Me too."

Sirius peered up at him with one eye, face half hidden and cushioned amongst fabric. "Sleep now? Or else we won't be up early enough for tomorrow."

"Don't remind me about tomorrow."

Sirius laughed and pulled the book from Remus' hand, then pushed at his chest, encouraging him to lay down. He did, but kept a careful distance between the two of them and rolled to face the opposite direction. How was it that in so many years of friendship, they hadn't shared a bed?

He listened to Sirius' breathing even out, and then, only then, did he relax enough to drift off himself.

Sirius found himself huffing with irritation, moving to properly lay down himself. Was this Remus really so shy of initiating something? This version of Sirius had been flirting for the entire day and Remus couldn't even get the message?

Remus woke slowly, his eyelids still weighed down by sleep when he processed the pressure against his chest. Then there was the breathing by his ear, and the leg between his, and he forced his eyes open to see Sirius clinging onto him. His arm was wrapped around Remus, face tucked into his neck and legs sprawled out across his.

Sirius read on, getting increasingly frustrated as their tension thickened but never actually progressed, the two characters circling each other endlessly.

Then, finally, the night after they returned to their house, Sirius ended up lingering in Remus' doorway, unwilling to end the conversation to sleep.

"You should go to bed." Remus said when Sirius yawned for the third time, but he shook his head blearily.

"I want to keep talking to you."

Remus bit his lip in brief consideration, then steeled himself. They'd shared a bed before, it was something they could do again.

"Well, if you're that desperate to keep talking," he tried to keep the nervous anticipation from his voice and pulled back the duvet from the spot next to him, offering it to a wide-eyed Sirius.

They both cite the shared hotel room as an excuse for their decision, ending up lying next to each other in Remus' bed and talking for a while. It was the kind of interaction he could easily imagine them having in real life.

The conversation trailed off yet Sirius didn't stop looking at him, his face beautiful in the dim lamplight. Remus looked away, accepting his fate of another night of stilted silence, until he felt Sirius move closer. The fabric rustled beneath them and a hand snaked onto his abdomen.

"This okay?" Sirius asked, glancing at him with earnest eyes.

Remus nodded, hoping his uneven breathing wasn't noticeable. "Yeah."

Whether or not Sirius had spotted his panic quickly lost importance as he tightened his hand around Remus' waist, forcing a gasp from his mouth.

He immediately slammed his eyes shut, mortification blooming across his face.

"Are my hands cold?" Sirius asked, an edge to his voice.

It was all Remus could do to respond with a quiet, shaky, "no."

The hand tightened again, and Remus had to focus on existing through the sheer amount of incoherent thoughts that were flying through his brain. It got infinitely worse when slowly, the hand crept down to his hip, and then his thigh, squeezing. Remus felt his face shift with the growing arousal that accompanied it.

There was a quick pressure at his neck, one he didn't understand until it happened again. Sirius' mouth was pressing kisses onto the skin of his neck, and Remus felt his soul eject itself from his body.

It was then that Sirius came back to himself and realised what he was reading — what he was about to read.

Yeah, okay, maybe he was stepping into weird territory now. That was definitely weird, right? Reading sex scenes between him and his best friend? That was firmly in the ballpark of weird.

The little letters on the screen were staring at him tauntingly, and he swore they knew exactly what he was about to do. In for a penny, in for a pound, and Sirius had gotten himself invested in this fictional version of them. He needed to know how it ended, and that was the only reason he continued to read.

He kept telling himself that when two hours had passed and he was knee-deep in the trenches of the account, reading everything he could, no matter how explicit. The next morning, he hid in his room until the afternoon, when the shame had died down just enough for him to not scream if he looked at Remus.

Two weeks later, Sirius was fifteen pages deep in the Remus/Sirius tag and could not stop reading. It was bad, it was so unbelievably bad.

James had gotten interested in a normal way, or at least as normal as possible. He read things about him and his wife out of curiosity, that was fine. Sirius had started with curiosity, but had rapidly devolved into just plain obsession. An obsession regarding a friend he was in no ways involved with, no matter how many valid points some of these fanfictions brought up.

Why did they share clothes so often? Was that not normal? And Sirius did have a habit of bringing Remus things when he was streaming to make sure he was comfortable, and sticking with him during every game, and prioritising him over all their friends… Still, he was sure that didn't mean anything. They were just closer friends than most.

He realised just how screwed he was when he was curled up at midnight, searching through the fluff fics for something domestic. Of course, TheStarsMoon had written several, and after a couple of minutes, he ended up back on their account to find them. He'd read them all already but they were the best ones — well characterised and pretty accurate.

He wanted to read something sweet, something that felt true to their lives, as though he and Remus actually were dating.

He stopped, his mind going blank, and then he set his phone down. That was a weird direction he'd just gone in, wasn't it? He and Remus weren't dating, and that was fine. That was exactly the way they'd always been — best friends — why would that change? Why would Sirius want it to change?

Everything he'd been reading must've been getting to him. He wasn't a relationship person and never had been, he'd always found it better to spend that time with friends rather than lacklustre dates. Remus had tried a few times, a couple of relationships that lasted a few years, but those never went anywhere either.

He just needed to get out of his head and stop reading fanfiction. His life was good, perfect, even, and getting caught up in fictionalised versions of it wouldn't do him any good.

Sirius didn't stop reading fanfiction.

He'd also never realised just how often he flirted with Remus. From their videos and streams to their interactions in their real life, he started to notice every single time he did. He flirted with the others too, though nowhere near as much. There was just something about Remus that made it tempting, he wanted to see the way he flustered and tried to brush it off, and even better were the occasions he returned the sentiment.

Okay, so Sirius wasn't stupid. Remus had always been hot, so it made sense that flirting with him was fun. But he wasn't just hot, he was Sirius' best friend, therefore he needed to be sensible and get a fucking grip. His internal monologue didn't need to start mimicking what he'd read, that was absurd.

Even despite his attempts at self-soothing, Sirius felt tenser than usual whenever they were alone together. It was still unbearably comfortable, it was Remus, of course things were comfortable, but there were nerves he'd never noticed before. He'd also never noticed quite how sweet Remus looked when he blushed, never noticed how often he handed out compliments to Sirius even amidst bickering, never noticed how the two of them existed so easily in each other's presence.

Or rather, he had noticed that before, but never consciously, never enough to understand the weight of what it could be.

But it wasn't anything. It wasn't.

Remus was curled up with a book, as he was prone to doing, and Sirius was flicking through channels on the TV, glancing over at Remus whenever he was spared the chance. He may have underestimated how subtle he was being when he looked over again and found Remus' confused gaze.

"You alright, Pads?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just can't find a good channel."

"Try reading that book you bought the other day."

He clicked the remote a bit more before giving up and grabbing his book, plopping back down on the sofa and sprawling out until his knee brushed against Remus'. He pushed back, letting their legs settle against each other, that little point of contact sparking.

Sirius cooked that night, trying something new for once. It turned out okay-ish, if a little burnt around the edges, and despite the teasing from Remus, he still thanked him and loaded the dishwasher. They talked all throughout the meal and the subsequent film they watched, Remus being the one to definitively pick after Sirius' endless scrolling earlier in the night.

"I'm exhausted." He could tell Remus was telling the truth, his eyelids drooping as he talked.

"Get dressed for bed then."

Remus grumbled half-heartedly but stood, Sirius not far behind, and they ended up brushing their teeth next to each other, side by side in their pyjamas in front of the sink. They'd both grabbed old band t-shirts and it felt like they matched, Sirius with Queen and Remus with Bowie.

He could tell Remus' had caught on to the same thing when he spat out his toothpaste, looking up with a smirk.

"But can you name five Queen songs?"

"I will actually kill you."

Remus laughed at him, walking to his room and immediately heading to his bed.

"Nah, you wouldn't. Who would tell you what films to watch?"

"Okay, yeah whatever. It was a good choice."

Remus was peering at him through half closed eyes, "I did tell you to watch that one first, before you scrolled for ages."

"No need to rub it in," Sirius said through a yawn.

"You should sleep, if you're tired."

He shook his head, "I want to keep chatting to you."

"We've been chatting all day," Remus protested, but Sirius just shrugged. All day clearly hadn't been enough.

"And?"

He saw something spark in Remus' eyes, mischief perhaps? He watched him reach out a hand, slowly drawing back the three layers of blankets on his bed.

"Well, if you're that desperate to keep talking."

Sirius froze. That sounded familiar. Why did that sound familiar? Was Remus offering to let him sleep in his bed?

That was — huh. That was surely a bad idea, right?

He got into the bed.

Remus didn't really seem to have expected that, his eyes no longer nearly closed. Instead, he was staring at him with unfiltered shock, and Sirius nudged him.

"Keep talking then. You offered."

"I didn't—" Remus swallowed, "—okay."

So they kept talking, until Remus' words slowed and he fell asleep, his head inches away from Sirius' shoulder. He debated moving to give Remus a place to rest against him, then remembered they were in a bed already, and therefore he was already resting on the pillow. That was why it was there.

His shoulder would do a better job though, right?

Sirius shuffled carefully, just that bit closer to close the gap, and Remus met the contact with a pleased sigh that sent shockwaves through Sirius' body.

Oh god. Oh, oh no. Sirius wasn't feeling things, was he?

He didn't want Remus to move. Rather pointedly, he wanted Remus to stay, tucked against him forever, maybe even closer considering there was still a good bit of space between them. He wanted Remus to be right by his side in a very permanent manner, which wasn't a new feeling but it felt a lot more weighted when they were doing something like this.

It didn't have to mean anything though, friendships could be this strong. Sirius was just muddled still, but he could try to convince himself that it was all fine, that he hadn't read fanfictions exactly like this—

Wait. Sirius had read fanfictions exactly like this.

The echo of Remus' voice played in his ears, as did that first fic he'd ever decided to click on.

"Well, if you're that desperate to keep talking."

Sirius had read a fanfiction that said the exact same thing Remus had said. Remus had quoted a fanfiction Sirius had read. Remus quoted it.

He lay there, heart hammering so loudly he was sure Remus would've been able to hear it had he been awake.

Had Remus read their fics? Was Sirius not the only one? Why hadn't he told him so, and why had he looked so awkward when they talked about them? Was he worried Sirius would judge?

What the fuck was happening? It was a lot to process.

Remus was lying on his chest, and read fanfiction, enough to have memorised a quote from at least one. Sirius also understood the reference, which was not great for his own reputation. He wanted to leave, but he knew that if Remus woke to an empty bed, he would immediately start overthinking. Also, Remus was lying on him, he didn't want to ruin that.

Sirius thought about it a lot over the course of the next few days.

Should he talk to Remus about it, or would that make things stilted between them — the acknowledgement that they both liked thinking of themselves in a fictionalised relationship? He thought about going to James a few times but had no idea how he'd rationalise the situation he'd gotten himself into. He wasn't even sure why he felt like he had to rationalise it considering how little sense James operated with, but there was something indescribable making everything feel crushingly complicated.

Maybe it wasn't indescribable, maybe it was just something he didn't want to properly face.

He was so very fucked.

He was still unsure when a new fanfiction was posted by TheStarsMoon, and he stared at it with a look of abject horror. Not horror because of the fic itself, but the awareness that came with it.

This was the same author Remus had quoted. If he was right, and Remus truly was reading these fics, then the likelihood of him reading this one was high. That was oddly terrifying, just as much as it was exhilarating.

It was a little longer than usual and he could see it was based on the baking stream, at least initially. He stared at it then swore. Fuck it. He opened the fic and started reading, bundling his bedding around him like it could shield him from the implications. Frankly though, nothing could've shielded him from the brick of a realisation that was about to hit him in the face.

It went as expected, narrating the baking stream with extra attention paid to the more flirtatious parts of it and a borderline scandalous description of Sirius' playful tug on Remus' hair. The first sign that something was off came soon after that, when Remus was editing and Sirius brought him a mug of tea.

It was one of those things he did, routine, not that he thought he'd mentioned it online before. But there it was, happening, so perhaps he had just forgotten telling their audience.

Then, it started to tumble into something else.

Sirius placed the mug down and stood behind him, watching Remus edit. His hips came to rest against the desk chair and his hands ended up in Remus' curls, fingers flexing enough to catch and send flurries of sparks skittering across Remus' scalp.

"Use that clip of me in your jumper, I love that one."

Remus hummed playfully, as though his entire body didn't feel like a live wire. "Yeah? I still can't believe you did that."

"You got a problem with it?"

"No, you looked good."

The hands in his hair froze for a second before starting again, more intentional this time.

"Good? You liked me in your jumper?"

"As much as you liked wearing it, I guess."

Sirius was silent behind him, fingers still tugging and weaving, causing a steady heat to build and blood to pool where it shouldn't.

"Your hair is pretty," Sirius stated, his voice dipping into a quiet, low tone. Remus' breath caught, unsure of what was happening, until Sirius finally pulled away.

"Goodnight Moons," he called behind him as he left, clicking the door shut, his footsteps quick down the hall. Remus sat there, jaw sitting slightly open in shock, ten minutes passing before he was able to collect himself and drag himself away from his pc.

That was… that was an interaction they'd had, nearly. Some details had shifted, but Sirius had called his hair pretty, leaning over him while he edited and a cup of tea sat carefully on the desk beside them. That had happened, solely between the two of them. Had Remus told the story on his stream?

It became apparent that he hadn't when another similarity popped up, one more everyday detail innocently inserted into the fanfiction.

Sirius returned in a Queen t-shirt, soft and rumpled, and he'd always been weak for Sirius when he looked like that — tired and domestic.

He gestured to the bed next to him. "We can keep talking."

It wasn't the same phrasing. He noticed that, perhaps using the fact same words in two different fics would've been too much. But the Queen t-shirt and the invitation, those were familiar.

Sirius smiled at him and walked over, unusually slow in his actions as he joined him. They lay barely inches apart and soon, he felt a press of a leg beneath the duvet.

Remus really was as exhausted as he had claimed, so the conversation lulled not long after. He was on the brink of sleep when he felt himself guided to rest against a shoulder, stable beneath his head. Then, suddenly, he didn't feel too tired after all.

Fuck. There was no way Remus had been awake to notice Sirius do that. There was no way he'd noticed and then— then what? Then written about it?

That was pointedly more insane than Sirius reading fanfiction, wasn't it? The idea that Remus himself was the one writing it. Not just writing it, but writing it consistently.

There was also the fact that if TheStarsMoon was Remus, then he would have been writing things that were, to put it lightly, pornographic. Was that really something Remus would do?

He scrolled lower in the fic, skimming it, and flushed deeply when he hit flashes of text.

'Sirius pulled harder, Remus' head snapping back as a moan forced its way out of him.'

'Sirius' hair spilled across the pillow, framing his face in gorgeous waves. He needed his hands in it, immediately.'

'The pressure built and built, searing hot until something snapped and he c—'

Okay. Sirius forced himself to stop scrolling before he found himself in unspeakable territory, carefully ignoring that he'd crossed that boundary countless times before. That couldn't be Remus, right?

He checked the tags, which surprisingly hadn't changed since the first time, and really, it couldn't be Remus. Remus wouldn't sit there and write thousands of words of hair-pulling smut, that was ridiculous. Remus wasn't into that, no way. If he was, things would've gotten majorly embarrassing when he was messing with his hair during the baking stream.

Sirius had YouTube open before he could think twice and found a reupload of the clip.

It was research, he was doing research to offset the suspicions. Nothing more.

It started with Sirius wandering over to Remus, leaning over his shoulder and he could see Remus bracing himself against the counter. They spoke, then Sirius reached up and pulled a little at his hair as he complimented it.

From where he was stood, he had only heard the little noise Remus made, a quick breath that he'd presumed to be a laugh of sorts. The noise hadn't been picked up by the stream, but his physical reaction had. Remus' cheeks flushed and his hands flexed open and closed, not concrete evidence, but still something. And if it was what he was presuming then that was… Sirius was having feelings about that. Did he need think about why he wanted to fuck his best friend? That was a question he probably should've already faced considering the stuff he'd been reading, but this felt much more real.

He opened the fic again, scrolling further down as he realised just how many words there actually were. Amongst those words were another two sex scenes, one of which had Remus guiding Sirius around by the hair and fuck he'd definitely ended up in the kind of dangerous territory he'd wanted to avoid because that? That instantly discarded any of his remaining self respect as a crystal clear picture of Remus pulling him around, fingers clenched tight in his curls, plastered itself in his mind, and all the blood in his body rushed south.

His theory of TheStarsMoon being Remus was a faulty one at best, but he couldn't help but find part of him that was praying for it to be true. He just needed to find actual, solid proof, then deal with whatever the aftermath would be.

Sirius wanted to test his theory in person.

That was kind of insane, right? But so was the idea that a mysterious fan was Remus, though he really couldn't think of any excuse for that quote, nor the scenes that reflected their real life near perfectly.

There were definitely sensible ways of figuring it out. Hell, he could sit there and politely ask Remus if he'd ever written fanfiction about the two of them and then take the confused 'no?' he would undoubtedly receive and let it rest. But Sirius couldn't stop thinking.

It was the lines about his hair that had him stuck. They'd be normal, then Sirius would remember TheStarsMoon and the image of Remus' hands in his hair would plant itself firmly in his mind and he'd have to awkwardly find an excuse to leave the room before things took a humiliating turn.

He knew his hair was nice, of course it was! But for Remus — maybe Remus — to notice that? He felt like he'd gone backwards twenty years and reverted into his teenage self with how horny he felt.

He tried to push it out of his mind at first, but it kept pervading, reminder after reminder until he felt like he was going insane. It all collated one night when he was sprawled on Remus' bed, watching him dither around his room. He'd decided his entire bookshelf needed reorganising by genre rather than author name, stating that 'it was his shelf so it only had to make sense to him'. The room was then slowly filled with precarious stacks of books that didn't really seem to connect, though they must've to Remus.

Sirius had tried to help but quickly realised that he was no use, and dropped down to the mattress to provide entertainment.

Remus pulled the last book from the shelf and look around, identifying a pile and picking his way through at least six other stacks to plop it down on top. Rolling his shoulders, he groaned, then made his way to the bed and collapsed at Sirius' side.

"I may have just destroyed my shoulders."

Sirius snorted and turned to face him. "Hopefully not too badly, you've still got to put those piles all back."

"Don't even remind me."

It was when Remus also turned on his side that he accidentally laid on Sirius' spread hair. It was barely a moment before he glanced down and apologised, moving away and just barely dragging across it enough to move it along the sheets. There was a faint prickle at Sirius scalp, and he gave himself a moment to acknowledge that what he was about to do was incredibly stupid.

Then, of course, he went along with it anyway.

"Do you like it?"

Remus looked at him, confused. "Like what?"

"My hair. Do you like my hair?"

To Remus, it must've come out of nowhere. He couldn't hear Sirius' spiralling internal monologue. He took it in stride though, used to Sirius' bouncing topics.

"It's lovely, why? Have I given you reason to think otherwise?"

"I mean, you didn't seem fussed to touch it."

He watched Remus' face stutter through a series of increasingly distressed emotions at the implication that he could touch it. Oh Sirius was evil, so, so evil.

"Touch it?" Remus eventually choked out.

"Yeah. You could, if you'd like."

"I could — I could touch your hair?" He sounded a little bit pained, and any hesitation Sirius had was quickly going out the window. Oh, this was fun. "As in, you'd want that?"

Sirius smiled at him, coy and a little bit inviting. It was the smile he gave to men at clubs, only ever aimed towards Remus if he was joking. He wasn't sure which way he was hoping it would be interpreted.

Remus had always been a little skittish, so Sirius wasn't expecting much. He found himself pleasantly surprised when a hand made its way to the hair on the pillow between them, as though Remus couldn't hold himself back now the offer was out there. He fiddled lightly with the strands, not enough for anything to be felt, but Sirius still had to put in effort to keep his breathing level. God, what was happening to him?

It didn't take long for Remus to get bolder, progressing to carding his fingers through what was on the sheets.

"It's soft," his voice was hushed.

"Thanks," Sirius whispered back. He shuffled closer and tilted his head just enough for some more hair to fall from the other side, tumbling in front of his face to catch Remus' attention.

He had no idea if Remus noticed the ruse for what it was, but it worked. His eyes followed the movement, then so did his hand, tucking the hair back behind Sirius' ear. It lingered there, Remus watching his face for any sign of discomfort. When Sirius gave no other signal than an encouraging smile, Remus allowed his hand to slip into his hair fully, entire palm curved around the back of his skull. When he let his fingers curl a little and Sirius felt the tug, he had to hold back a moan. It really should not have been as much of a turn-on as it was, Sirius hadn't even known he was into it in the first place.

Remus noticed him tense and paused, glancing at his face with a stricken expression. He moved away like he'd been burnt, catching his hand in a couple of knots on the way.

"Sorry. Sorry, that was weird."

"No it wasn't." Sirius was disappointed he'd stopped, and now Remus was looking at him, concerned and chewing on his lip, and Sirius was close to losing his mind.

"How about you?"

"What?" Remus asked, and Sirius had been doing an awful job at staying coherent throughout the conversation.

"Do you like it when people play with your hair?"

It was a guess, but an educated one, and he felt like it was correct when he saw Remus freeze and immediately start evaluating his answer. He always did that when it came to things he wanted but felt he couldn't have, thinking for a second before rejecting it and pretending like he didn't mind.

"I'm asking genuinely, Remus. Tell me the truth."

Maybe there was something in the quiet way he asked, or the thickening tension of the room, but Remus didn't lie like Sirius presumed he would. He closed his eyes as though being unable to see Sirius would make the situation anything lesser, and then nodded.

That was all the invitation Sirius needed to move closer until the space between them was barely a hands width apart, and reach up to Remus' curls. They were shorter than his own and he immediately went for the full performance, tangling his fingers into them with no attempt at subtlety. Remus made a choked noise, cutting himself off but not before Sirius heard how desperate it was.

"Yeah?" He smirked at Remus' face, flushed and nervous. He stayed still as he waited for an answer, and watched Remus scramble for words.

"Yeah." Even his voice was breathy and the sound of it alone sent Sirius tumbling headfirst off a cliff he had been toeing the edge of for the entire interaction.

He pulled with both hands and watched Remus crumple, expression keening and air heaving out of him for the split second it took him to gather himself. He did it again and got the same reaction, like no matter how much Remus tried to brace himself, it was never quite enough to stop himself from reacting on impulse.

"Oh, you really like this, don't you?"

Remus started breathing harder and Sirius heard the weight of his own voice. That wasn't a voice you aimed at friends, it was dripping in desire so thick it was tangible. And he'd just used it to speak to Remus — Remus, who was close to squirming already and all Sirius had done was put hands in his hair.

He saw Remus' mouth open and shut, a little punch of breath like he attempted to speak. Sirius waited to see if it went anywhere, but Remus didn't talk. Instead he opened his eyes, gaze darting over Sirius' expression with a plea. He was hardly going to deny him, and started moving his hands again, trailing them down to tug at the little hairs at the base of his neck.

He hummed in satisfaction when Remus let a gasp escape, eyelids shuttering.

At the next little tug, Remus suddenly jerked away, putting a foot of space between them. Sirius jolted at the shift, hands grasping at air before falling to the sheets.

"Sorry, I just — fuck, uh." Remus scrubbed a hand over his face and rolled onto his back. "I have a video to edit, I forgot, I'm sorry."

Sirius watched him, mind whirling. There was no video, he knew that, and Remus had surely been enjoying it if his reactions were anything to go by.

Remus sat up, carefully angling his lower body away from Sirius and failing to remain inconspicuous about it. There was a tug in Sirius' gut and he knew he was in a similar boat, not that Remus would've noticed as he exited the room without even a glance back.

He waited until the door clicked shut and sighed. Fuck.

Maybe he shouldn't have expected Remus to take what he actually wanted. Sirius knew him better than that, always the martyr. He had gotten better over the years but still took happiness like it was wrapped in warning tape.

He wasn't sure where Remus was going, Sirius now alone in his room and literally lying on Remus' bed. He'd cut himself off from the only place in the house that was actually his own private space, in sole favour of a quick retreat.

He sighed and stared at the ceiling, at the botched job the contractor had done and the paint slapped over to hide it. Him and Remus had painted the first layer of half the rooms in the house with their friends, hand prints and scrawled curses hidden everywhere. They'd done the rest themselves, and somewhere in Remus' room was a pair of hand prints they'd done at an awkward upside down angle, fingers pressed together at the bottom and palms angled to make a heart.

When had they ended like this? He couldn't pinpoint a day, or even a period of time where something had shifted. Maybe their relationship had always been the same.

He forced himself to haul his body up, sitting on the bed with hands gripping the sheets. He wasn't sure whether he should leave or not. Would it be better to give Remus the space back? Or would the chance of bumping into him be too high?

Should he try to see him? Maybe if Remus couldn't run away from it, they could actually face whatever that had just been. But then Sirius would also have to face it, and admittedly everything was much easier when he was focusing on someone else rather than himself. The thought of his own feelings for Remus was daunting, overwhelming in devotion he hadn't realised existed.

He sat there, clutching at the sheets as he tried to figure out if that had been proof or not. It was obvious that Remus had been into it, but that didn't mean he was actually TheStarsMoon. He had to find something definitive.

Slowly, prepared for Remus to reenter the room at any time, he crept his way over to his desk, looking at the pc sat innocently on top of it. It would be catastrophically stupid of Remus to leave anything on there considering Sirius had his password.

Was it an invasion of privacy if Remus had given him his password willingly? For his sake, he hoped it wasn't.

It was easy to unlock the pc and open a new tab, Sirius holding his breath for a moment before opening the fanfiction site. It was already logged in when it loaded, and Sirius clicked onto the profile.

In crisp letters at the top of the page was the username 'TheStarsMoon', staring back at him like a declaration. Holy shit.

He had been right. He had been right the whole time. He'd been right, and Remus had been writing all of that about him. Huh.

Sirius shut down the pc, turned on his heel, and headed straight for the front door, barely pausing to pull on his trainers as a pale-faced Remus sat on the sofa and watched.

James, he needed to talk to James.

"Sirius?" James caught his arm as he barrelled past him into the house. "Woah, woah, slow down. What's going on?"

He was pretty sure he looked maniacal as he clutched him back and said, "I found something out."

"Found something out?" The door clicked shut behind them as James guided him into the living room. "Found what out?"

"Remus."

"You… found Remus out?"

"No, James I—" he inhaled and choked on it, feeling jittery and unsettled all over. This was a normal reaction, he was having a normal reaction. Everything was normal. "I read fanfiction."

James' face dropped into a perfect look of shock, then rippled into concern.

"I read fanfiction, and then I realised that it was all really, really familiar. Like, really familiar."

James was nodding along, seeming sympathetic as though he had any idea what Sirius was talking about.

"James. It was familiar, as in, it was the stuff we do."

"Yes, you two do act like that a lot."

"No! No, James, I mean exact! I mean, Remus is writing it!"

James stared at him, brows furrowed. "What?"

"Remus is writing fanfiction of us. He's TheStarsMoon."

There was complete silence, Sirius pressing his lips together and watching for a reaction. It came slowly, a furrow of his brows and a subtle grimace.

"…Right." He could see the disbelief playing out on James' face and felt moments away from punching him. "Look Pads, just because you've realised that you see yourself in these fics doesn't mean they're actually written by—"

"I saw them on his pc. I found his account, logged in, on his pc, fanfiction written. It's him."

James stuttered and failed the rest of his sentence, his jaw dropping. He stood frozen until finally a wheeze worked its way from his gaping mouth.

"That about sums it up, yeah."

"Remus is—? No, no way."

"Yep."

"But those fics are—!"

"Yeah."

James sat down, hard. Then he pulled out his phone and Sirius knew exactly whose page he was finding. Within moments he was scrolling and pulling a variety of faces.

"I forgot how insane some of these are." He looked up at Sirius, eyeing his face. "In a good way? I guess?"

"Yeah, it's…" Sirius trailed off. He knew he was weirdly taken by it all. Objectively it was insane, but subjectively? Subjectively, Sirius kind of wanted to get the account up for himself and spend a heinous amount of time in a bedroom with a locked door. Perhaps he was a biased source.

"I think it's good."

James kept scrolling. "And you're sure it's him? Damn, how'd you even figure this out?"

"He said some things — quotes, some quotes from the fics. Then I presumed he read them until the recent fic he posted had a few things that the public didn't know about, and then I tested my hypothesis and checked his pc."

"Tested your hypothesis? By looking at his pc?"

"No." Sirius winced. "I checked my hypothesis that it was him by pulling his hair in a kind of sexy way."

"What?"

"Okay, not kind of — really. It was really sexy. I think I've discovered something about myself because seriously, hair pulling is hot."

"You pulled his hair? Sexually?" James' voice climbed up into a pitch so high that the neighbours dogs could probably hear it, and Sirius was getting flashbacks to the rare occasions in which his secondary school self would make bad decisions without James' involvement.

"Yes, because that's what the recent fic was about. And he was into it, but ran away because he's Remus and you know what he's like."

"What did he say after?"

Sirius stared at him blankly. "I just said he ran away."

"And you didn't go after him?" James checked, eyebrows raised high. "You came straight here?"

"Yes."

His answer was met with a resounding groan as James folded over at the waist into a ball of stress.

"Are you alright?"

James pushed himself back up and stared at Sirius directly in the eyes.

"Is Remus currently under the impression that you guys had a line-crossing interaction and then you ran away to someone else's house."

"It wasn't line crossing!"

"Sirius, that is not the main problem here."

He thought for a moment before his stomach dropped. "Oh fuck, he is, he is under that impression. Oh shit."

Sirius should've realised that. He knew Remus well enough to know that he was probably close to throwing up from sheer anxiety after watching him leave. He didn't have the context, all he saw was Sirius visibly freaking out and running away after something that Remus had clearly been wanting for a while. Sirius, in turn, was now feeling nauseous.

"I have to go back."

"Yes, you do. Go talk to him, sort this out!" The last half of James' words were yelled after Sirius, already headed down the hall and stumbling through trying to put on shoes and keep moving at the same time.

The drive home had never felt quicker, though that may have been the speeding laws he was surely breaking. He cussed out more than a few red lights on the way and slammed through their flat's front door with too much force.

Remus wasn't in the living room anymore, and dread clutched at his chest. The rush he was feeling turned from a full-body hum to the thudding of his heart, loud in his ears.

He found him in his room, laying in the same bed that they'd been in not twenty minutes prior. His back was to the door, but the tense line of his shoulders gave him away — he was awake, and he knew Sirius was there.

"Remus."

"What?" He was doing that thing where he buried his feelings again, voice numb, though Sirius knew there would be tears on his face if he turned over.

"We need to talk."

"About what?"

"Remus…"

"Sirius."

He had no idea how to approach the conversation. Maybe tact was needed, but he'd always been one to storm through things. That audacity had caused more than a few arguments, but solved several others, so he didn't feel much of an urge to change his nature.

"Oh okay, so TheStarsMoon is some other random guy then? You have nothing to do with that?"

Remus hadn't been expecting that accusation, it was obvious that his mind was on the whole hair thing. He watched the figure, curled up and silent, and waited.

"Fuck, Sirius. That wasn't— I mean, it was—" Remus sat up with a jolt and looked at him then, and he'd been correct about the crying. There was the glisten of tears on his cheeks and his eyes were red. "—shit."

"It's fine."

Remus scoffed at him, disbelief etched into his expression. "It's fine? Fine? It's not fucking fine! I've been acting like a freak and you're just sitting there saying it's fine?"

He hated how upset Remus looked, but there was something in how distraught he was, something that showed how much he cared. He knew Remus loved him, in at least a platonic sense, their everyday life proved that enough. But this was a new way of seeing that love, one that felt painfully raw and dizzyingly real.

"Aren't I the one that should get to decide that? Besides, if you're weird for writing it, then I'm weird for reading it, aren't I? It's been a couple weeks since I started and I only just figured out it's you."

Remus blinked at him, face loosening into a look of confusion. "You've been reading them? Why?"

"Why were you writing them?"

That just made Remus look even more put on the spot, eyes widening in panic.

"Fucking hell Remus, I'm trying to say I read them because I liked them. Liked the idea of us. Okay?" He couldn't help his voice getting defensive. Remus thought he hated him and was disturbed by it all. He couldn't have been more wrong, but he was refusing to actually pay attention to what Sirius was saying.

"Of… us?" Remus whispered, voice catching. He still seemed wary, but had lost the edge he'd previously had. "The idea of us?"

"Do you think I was just letting you play with my hair for shits and giggles?"

"I thought you were fucking with me."

"Remus," he sighed. "I wasn't fucking with you. I wanted to know if you'd really written those things, because if you had then it meant that you felt the same as I did. As I do."

"As you do?" Remus repeated, words breathy. It was like he couldn't process them, stuck in his head instead of listening.

Well, if he was struggling to understand through listening, then Sirius would have to take further measures.

He walked over to the bed and sat next to him, knocking their knees together. "Remus. You've noticed how we act, haven't you? I know you have, I've read it."

He watched Remus blush, opening his mouth with nothing to say.

"We act like a couple, yeah?"

He waited for a response, and Remus nodded then spoke.

"Yeah, we do. I didn't think you realised, and I thought if I brought attention to it then you'd stop. You wouldn't want to anymore."

"I do want to, Remus. I want all of it, not just 'acting' like a couple."

There was hope in Remus' eyes, having replaced the sadness as soon as he started to understand what Sirius was communicating. Now that hope shone.

"You want all of it? As in, you want to be a couple?"

Sirius grinned. "Perhaps a little," he held his fingers up in a pinch, dragging the conversation into something light-hearted. He couldn't bear to see any upset on Remus' face anymore, he needed him to be happy.

Remus shoved him lightly in the side then dragged him right back when he swayed away, any tension folding into something warm.

"Yeah? Does that mean I can kiss you?"

"I suppose it does."

Remus was the one to lean in, connecting their lips with a soft sigh. It was a light kiss, barely more than a brush, but it felt poignant, the marking of a shift from one thing to another even if the actual changes would be few and far between. This was one of those changes though, the ability to feel Remus' mouth against his, and the chance to learn about him in a whole new way.

They separated and looked at each other, something beautifully soft in Remus' eyes, and Sirius couldn't help but kiss him again, syrupy affection spilling from him until they had to stop because they were smiling too hard.

"I knew it was you," Sirius whispered. He didn't like the shame that he was met with in response. "Hey, I'm happy about it, really."

"You're actually insane." Remus shook his head, a self-conscious smile slipping through. "Nobody would be happy about that."

"That's funny, because I am." Sirius smirked and slid his hands up Remus' body until they were planted firmly in his hair. "For a variety of reasons, including that now I know about this."

He pulled lightly and watched Remus' head tilt back, lips parting and neck exposed, before Remus righted himself and pushed him away with a fond snort.

"Okay, we can't do that yet, we need to talk."

"Yet?" he teased, and Remus smiled.

"Yet."

"But eventually?"

"Sirius," as Remus spoke, his hands came up to cup Sirius' face, gentle. "I want everything with you, eventually."

"I want everything with you now."

"Well," he laughed, "yes, that too. Everything now and forever."

Sirius kissed him again. He wanted to inhale the words, internalise them and breathe them and live them, and from the way Remus was kissing him back, it seemed he felt the same.