Chapter Text
America was not what Remus Lupin had expected.
In nineteen-eighty-two, transatlantic telecom was still a big deal, and that was Muggle technology; transatlantic Apparation or Floo was downright dangerous. He took an airplane instead, tricking and forging (thank you Sirius, for this at least) his way through the airport, onto the plane, past customs, and out into the big wide world.
He touched down at Logan in Boston, which seemed nice; it reminded him of England, sort of, with cobbled streets and old brick houses. But that was what it was -- a New England. That was why he'd left to begin with. England was not where he wanted to be.
He sent a postcard to his father, one to Dumbledore, and one to Alastor Moody, who'd been his mentor and grandfathered him into the Order; then he moved inland, away from water. He'd spent his whole life on an island and America was much bigger than he'd imagined.
Reading a map was hard. A day's train ride on an English map was three days' worth or more on an American one. Words were said differently, spelled differently. Schedules ran differently, and his quiet, polite bewilderment went ignored by the masses. This, at least, he was used to, but without James or Sirius to forge onwards, or Peter to bend a head over the bus schedule and help him puzzle it out, he was utterly at a loss.
He bought an apple at a stand in some small town in western Massachusetts where the bus put him down. He sat, and considered.
He had realised, somewhat, that it didn't matter if he was at a loss; it wasn't as though he was going anywhere in particular, or had to be there at any specific time. His Muggle cash was going to run out soon, and he only had two Galleons past that. He could go north to Salem, but Moody'd warned him off it; aside from the Institute it was all a bunch of Muggle nut jobs. West was the vast majority of America, which in his mind was one long stretch of prairie with cowboys riding through it. South was the Mississippi, which conjured images of Mardi-Gras masks and riverboats. North was Canada, full of moose. Meese?
He got on the next bus and let it take him somewhere for two days, and got off in what might have legitimately been considered the Heartland.
This was not even a new England, but an old one; this was the world of his childhood with an American accent tacked on, rural farmers living and dying on their land. Good folk; salt of the earth. Wide fields and dusty little towns, agricultural schools. He still hadn't seen a cowboy, but there was world enough and time for that. It was a good line to try on women, too. So why did you come to America? Well, I had this intense desire to see a ten gallon hat...
He swapped labor for a meal and a few dollars at a time, surprising his temporary employers with the strength in his still-boyish body. He worked for magical folk too, when he came across them, getting rid of pests or charming repairs around houses.
He always moved on before the full moon, locking himself in abandoned gas-station restrooms, outhouses, shackling himself with rusty chain if no other opportunity presented itself.
Twice, when he felt he was safely deep enough in the wilderness, he ran wild. Once he woke with buckshot in his thigh, and contributed a little to local legend when he had it seen-to by a Muggle Healer. There's something not right about that drifter who came through....
He got bored with jobbing farm-work and went south to Texas. He finally saw a cowboy, and was less than impressed. He moved on again quickly, once he'd made enough cash for the train to Louisiana, which was the state the coin had landed on when he'd flipped it onto a train schedule.
People took a liking to him in America, deferred to him sometimes and were always polite. Women thought his accent was lovely, even if they sometimes thought it was Australian. He enjoyed being liked, being pursued for the first time in his life, without handsome Sirius and popular James overshadowing him. He almost convinced himself he didn't miss them.
Of course in the south the women spoke with a drawl that was as enchanting to him as his accent was to them, and he was tempted to stay in Louisiana. But he met a woman who looked like Lily and asked him to bite her when they had sex, and that was the end of that. He got as far as the Alabama state line before he stopped for breath.
He was looking for work in Montgomery, spending his last few dollars (still somewhat bemused by the monochrome qualities of American money, all green and cream) on a cup of coffee and a sandwich, when the owl found him. It screeched in, dropped a letter -- nearly in his coffee -- and screeched out again.
The other four people in the cafe stared. He regarded the letter for a moment, then reached over as if this was a common occurrence in Muggle America and picked up the letter, opening it. Parchment; wax seal from Hogwarts; Dumbledore's hand.
Remus,
I'm told by your father that your last postcard was from Montgomery, and I hope this letter finds you still there; there's been an opening at an American magical boys' school in the area --
Three days later he was suddenly Professor Remus Lupin, of the Montgomery Academy For Young Wizards. He even had a uniform. Small children saluted him. It was very peculiar.
The Academy was a boarding school on the outskirts of town, housed in an old plantation. It was run with military precision, and he didn't much care for some of the discipline, but it was a regular job and he was respected. Some of the other professors even had him to dinner, which was nice.
He taught Charms, not his best subject, but he was competent enough. He discovered he was a pretty good teacher. Once he'd put some bolts and silencing spells on the closet in his bedroom, he had a place to go on the full moons. The Headmaster -- Principal -- covered his classes and told the students he was doing monthly orienteering runs with a local military unit.
He liked his uniform: grey wool and felt, with high collars and colourful stripes. He liked the way it made him seem bigger, the way it commanded respect. He taught a workshop in Muggle Arms -- he'd learned to handle a rifle when he was a child -- and took lessons in how to fence from the other European import, a Frenchman named Lareaux who taught Ancient Magical History.
The children seemed to like him as well as he liked them.
He was happy there. For the first time in a long time. For the first time in ever, he sometimes thought.
And then again...
***
He'd come to the Academy in September. The first Hallowe'en he was there, he locked himself in his rooms, and didn't answer the knocks or the pebbles thrown at his window. The upperclassmen were "vetting" the younger boys, and Lareaux and some of the other professors were on hand to make sure nobody went too far; after Hallowe'en the first-years were real students, not just pleb kiddies, and the fifth-years were Men, and the seventh-years attained some kind of elite status that he didn't inquire too closely about. Remus didn't pretend to understand it and didn't want any part of it, or anything else to do with Hallowe'en. He was supposed to be vetted too, as a new professor -- nothing like what they were doing to the children, merely a blindfolded march through the plantation grounds to the river, a dunking, and some wine afterwards with the other teachers.
But he didn't answer their catcalls and hoots, and after a while they assumed he must have gone out for the night.
When he was at Hogwarts he'd been granted special access to some parts of the library that were normally restricted, and he'd read about the magics that they didn't teach because there was no point to them anymore. Archaic spells like outdated workman's tools, exorcisms for magical creatures long since extinct, magic that had stopped working. Rituals for the dead.
To lay at peace, the books had said. He wasn't sure if they meant the spirits of the deceased or the souls of those who were left behind. He lit a candle each for James and Lily and Peter, and fell asleep with them still burning behind the tightly shuttered windows.
Nothing changed. Just as nothing had changed when he hadn't done a spell, the two years he'd already been wandering.
Harry was four years old. What a peculiar thought.
They said people went insane, in Azkaban, after a while. He wondered if Sirius had.
And then the next morning he put on his scarlet shirt and grey wool coat, his black breeches and belt and his spit-shined boots, and he went out into the sunny world of mid-autumn Alabama, and supervised morning drill. There was no end of structure at the school, and it was pleasant and easy to lose oneself in it.
The summer after his first year at the Academy, he chose to stay when the children left and help keep the grounds, repairing fences along the borders of the campus. He took a few jobs in the northern part of the state, ran into his first Dementor. He spent three days recovering and another two weeks learning how to cast a Patronus, from a pert young witch who made it more than worthwhile to stay the two weeks.
Nasty things, Dementors.
This year, knowing what would happen on Hallowe'en, he didn't want to wander, go out or stay in; he didn't want to say prayers for the dead or think about Harry and Sirius. He didn't know what he wanted. He felt uneasy in his skin, in a way he never felt even before the full moon. He was short with his students. When Ryan, the Dark Arts professor, asked if he would help supervise this year's Rites, he snarled a negative and walked on quickly, cheeks already burning with shame at his own behaviour.
He was strapping the fencing pads over his shoulders, tossing equipment down onto the bench in the changing room, when Lareaux walked in, carrying a small case. He stopped in the doorway, watching, until Remus finished with the buckles and turned to him.
Gabriel Lareaux was a lanky man, an intelligent sort who'd been teaching at the Academy for eight years. He said he'd come to Montgomery on a holiday for his health after some sort of vicious athletic accident that he rarely mentioned; like Remus, he'd taken to the structure and honour code of the school, and stayed on. His accent was thick but his English was impeccable, and the boys liked him because, in addition to ancient history, he taught Social Graces. Social Graces was what allowed several years' worth of awkward sixteen-year-olds to bravely woo the girls from the Finishing School down the road with their dancing abilities and table manners at the annual Academy Ball. Somehow, Gabriel Lareaux made dancing seem manly.
He also made athletics seem intellectual, and for the first time in his life Remus enjoyed it. He'd never been much for Quidditch. His lycanthropy had kept him fit and strong (and exhausted and sore) without much in the way of work, but now he enjoyed their weekly evening fencing matches.
He was looking forward to attempting to beat the crap out of someone.
"Are you going to dress?" he asked, tossing Lareaux a helmet. "Or just stand there ogling me all day?"
Lareaux smiled and shook his head. "Non, Lupin," he said, giving it his peculiar Loupahn inflection. He had tried Reymie a grand total of once before a frozen silence had informed him that nicknames were Not Done when it came to Remus Lupin. Still, he was French, and he defiantly twisted the syllables of the name until they fit his mouth. "No epee for you today."
Remus paused, then ripped the padding off his shoulder, throwing it down on the bench.
"Fine," he growled. "I'll go run the fences."
"Non," Lareaux continued. "We will still have a lesson today. No weapons, no padding."
Remus slammed the pads into his locker and shut the door violently. "I'm not going to study bloody tactics, Lareaux. If you're not planning on a real lesson today I'd just as soon not bother."
Lareaux cocked his head. "Such rage in one so young."
"I'm not -- I'm not young," Remus said, gathering himself into something approaching composure. He could afford to be rude to Ryan; Lareaux was a better friend, and didn't deserve to be shouted at.
"Forgive. I did not mean it that way," Lareaux said. "You are angry. Oui. Come with me."
Remus reached for his uniform coat, pulling it on over his scarlet dress shirt as they walked down the corridor of the gymnasium (once a horse barn; the plantation had kept racing stables) and out onto the grounds. From the grass field and the dirt track, they could see the school building, once the big house, and the dormitories. Remus had been horrified to learn that the dormitories were once slave houses, but the students didn't seem to care. He'd almost grown used to the idea.
Lareaux opened the case he was carrying as they walked, and held it out to Remus. On a small velvet pad lay a vicious looking little tool, glinting in the red sunset -- a short, razor-sharp spike with six little legs, at angles from the base and curled, as though they were meant to fit over something. He tucked a finger under one, and with a little difficulty, bent it outwards a few degrees.
"What is it?" Remus asked sulkily.
"Un col-de-mort," Lareaux replied. "A death-collar. But more important, it is an allegory."
Remus glanced up at him, laying the horrible little thing back in its case. Lareaux snapped the case shut and slipped it into his back pocket.
"It is designed to fit over the end of an epee," Lareaux continued. "The legs spring around the end, oui?"
"Oui," Remus replied. He spoke only a little French, very poorly and mostly having to do with fencing, but Lareaux always seemed to expect it and he found himself answering without thinking.
"The blade covers the tip. What was once a game for gentlemen becomes a murderous farce," Lareaux said. "This is a thing which turns an innocent thing into something wicked. That is its sole purpose. A perversion."
Remus was silent. Lareaux glanced sidelong at him as they passed the old plantation building, turning onto the main road that led to the front gates.
"Anger is like the col-de-mort," Lareaux said. "It turns my lesson to you into your release. Non, non. No good. I am not here to be your kicking bag."
"Punching bag," Remus said, under his breath. Coming from another, the reproach would have made him die of shame. From Lareaux, it merely made the tense knot between his shoulders unravel, and made him kick the stones on the road like any errant sixth-year.
"So, today, no fencing. For us, a new game," Lareaux said. "We will eat; speak; drink; we have no duties this evening."
"You're not going with Ryan?" Remus asked, surprised. "But tonight's -- "
"Others will mind the boys tonight," Lareaux said dismissively. "I am not luring you away to your own initiation," he said hastily, when Remus hesitated at the gates. "You fled last year; no, it was not cowardice, that we know, you are not a cowardly man. You are an angry man; one can smell the rage inside you. Do you know your eyes are betraying you?"
Remus felt his heart tighten, his guts clench.
"You live only partways in this world, Loupahn," Lareaux said, turning to him. "You dream the world and care as much for it as for a dream. And Hallowe'en makes you angry, makes you hide deeper."
"That's not true."
"It is true." Lareaux smiled. "In three hours I will ask you why."
"I won't answer you -- "
"You will. Come." Lareaux put a hand on his shoulder. "Apparate. Follow me."
He vanished in a crack, and Remus followed; they emerged in a dark alley in downtown Montgomery, a common Apparation-point for the wizards and witches local to the area. Lareaux led him silently out into the main street and through a pair of heavy doors, into a dim, elegant-looking restaurant.
"Hallowe'en should be a day of celebration in America," Lareaux said. "Even for expatriates from the old country."
Remus shrugged, and watched a waiter set down two glasses of water in front of them. Lareaux lit a cigarette.
"Tell me," he said, when he'd exhaled, "Have you ever actually tried the famous Southern Comfort?"
***
"Quatre."
"Parry cinq!"
"Advance."
"Parry cinq, riposte quatre!"
"Ah! T'aurais gagné. If you could actually have done it."
Remus, chin propped on one hand, watched Lareaux lift the shot of Southern Comfort and down it, smoothly. He'd lost track of who would actually have won, if they were truly fencing instead of just firing off terms at each other; Lareaux was using toothpicks to keep score of who'd done how many shots. The Frenchman plucked one out of the ashtray and tossed it in the shot glass next to his elbow.
"We are my huit to your neuf," he said, pouring a new shot for himself.
"Mmh?"
"Eight," Lareaux said, "to nine. It is time for your exam."
"Exam?" Remus asked, curious. He had eaten a rather large, leisurely dinner and had been drinking more or less steadily since; he'd forgotten precisely why he was angry with Lareaux -- or with the world, for that matter. He was warm to his fingertips.
"Oui. I will say a word, you must answer. Translate."
Remus held up a finger and shook his head.
"You can barely speak English," he said. "What makes you think I can speak French right now?"
"Mmm. A hit. Perhaps..." Lareaux checked his watch, and signaled to a waiter to bring them the check. "We will see how you walk, instead."
Remus stood unsteadily and waited while Lareaux put down enough Muggle cash to pay the bill. They walked slowly and carefully out into the street again, back around and down into the alley.
"Can you Apparate?" Lareaux asked. Remus paused to think, forgot what he was supposed to be thinking about, and grinned at his friend. Lareaux shoved him lightly, and he stumbled back against the wall.
"No tolerance," the Frenchman said with a sigh. Remus pushed away, about to protest, when Lareaux wrapped his arms around him from behind, and there was the startlingly loud crack of Apparation.
They reappeared just outside the Academy gates. Lareaux held onto him a second longer than necessary before letting him go. Remus staggered forward, catching himself on the gatepost and laughing. Lareaux grinned back.
"Come, we have much to discuss yet," Lareux said, taking his elbow and lifting him upright. They ambled through the dark grounds, up into the plantation house and inside. Like Diagon Alley, it was much larger inside than out; Lareaux guided him up the grand staircase and down the long halls, only pausing when they were finally in the teachers' wing. Remus fumbled for his key, unlocking the door and holding it for Lareaux, who bowed and almost toppled over.
Safely inside, Remus dropped onto his bed and pulled his boots and socks off. Lareaux unbuttoned his coat and hung it on the hook on the wall that Remus had installed for guests, so that they wouldn't have to go into the closet -- the scoremarks on the wood would cause questions.
"Have a seat," he said, gesturing vaguely at the chair. His rooms were simple, even more so than most of the stark professors' quarters; a bed and quilt, desk and chair, mirror, bureau and trouser-press, a crowded bookshelf, a few smaller shelves with boot-brushes and the like on them. He took off his own coat and hung it up likewise. "Kick off your boots if you like. I'm going to wash," he added, stumbling into the small washroom off the main room and splashing some cold water on his face and hands.
When he returned Lareaux was also barefoot, boots neatly placed by the door, examining his bookshelf.
"I have finally discovered your addiction," he announced. "Your vice."
"More expensive than drinking," Remus answered, throwing himself into his chair. "But then you can't drink the same bottle twice."
"You've drunk these many times," Lareaux observed, taking down a tattered copy of Julius Caesar.
"Most are second-hand. I'm not so rich as all that," Remus answered. "When I left England, I..."
He stopped, the memory slowly seeping back through his brain, the reason he had been angry, had wanted to flee his own body.
"You miss England?" Lareaux asked kindly.
"Sometimes," Remus said, with a false smile. "But I'm an Academy boy now."
"Oui, vive l'Academie," Lareaux agreed. He straightened, tugged his shirt neat, and pointed at Remus, singing a line in a deep voice. "Alabama's sons are we..."
Remus grinned and joined in on the second line. "Honour strength and dignity -- "
"And our watchwords now and ever -- "
"Shall be taught in old Dixie -- "
Lareaux had a good strong baritone and Remus wasn't a bad low tenor; anyone crossing the grounds could have heard them singing the school anthem, perhaps less perfectly than men who hadn't downed an entire fifth of Southern Comfort between them, but with no less passion for all of that.
If we're called on we can stand and
If we're asked we can provide
For there are no fiercer Wizards
Than the southland's joy and pride
From the gulfs up to the border
Academy we are thine
And we'll whip any Yankee magic
You just name the place and time
If we're called on we can stand and
We will die or we'll live free
For there are no fiercer Wizards
Than Montgomery Academy...
Lareaux laughed again and collapsed across Remus' bed as Remus ended the line off-key. The anthem suddenly seemed very amusing, especially given that it was ten-year-olds who were expected to sing it.
"God, what an awful song," Remus said, shaking his head.
"Beauxbatons' was worse," Lareaux replied, propping himself on his elbows. "It is a law, I think. A school song should embarrass one as much as possible in front of one's competitors."
"Oh, I don't know, I rather liked Hogwarts' -- " Remus began, but cut off abruptly. A memory surfaced, unwelcome and unasked for, of Sirius singing lewd addendums to the Hogwarts school song.
Lareaux saw his hesitation, and the smile faded from his lips.
"Loupahn," he said quietly. "Tell me why you hate this day so very much."
"I don't -- "
"Tell me why you are only half in the world we live in," Lareaux persisted. "Why you wish to lose yourself. Why you have."
Remus ran a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes. "Why?"
"Because I wish to know."
"I don't owe you an explanation."
"I paid for dinner."
Remus looked up at him, stunned, and saw that Lareaux was grinning, sitting up on the bed.
"A joke, Remus," Lareaux said gently. "Tell me. Please."
Remus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, bowing his head.
"Voldemort," he said. Lareaux winced. "Nineteen-eighty-one."
"Oui, l'enfant qui a survécu."
"Oui," Remus said, somewhat sadly. "I knew the Potters."
Lareaux looked interested now. "Well?"
"Quite well. They were good friends."
He was silent for a while, until there was a sudden intake of breath from Lareaux.
"You," he said. "Loupahn. You are that Loupahn. The newspapers -- the photograph."
Remus nodded, staring at the floor. He had arrived at the wreckage of the Potter house after Hagrid and Sirius had gone. The Prophet's photographer had taken a picture of the barren pile of lumber and plaster -- and Remus standing to one side, staring at it in utter shock in the early-morning light. The photograph had gone around the world; some places had cropped him out, but more had left him in. His face wasn't visible behind windblown hair, and the stir of the wind against his robes were the only movement in the photograph. He remembered a piece of him freezing, remembered standing there for minutes on end, uncertain what to do.
A hand touched his shoulder. "You were friends with the traitor -- Black?"
"Yes."
Another pause.
"I fled France for fear of les mangeurs de mort," Lareaux said. "The Death's Eaters. They were blackmailing me. I was told if I did not join..."
"You're not alone there," Remus said bitterly. There was a rustling, and he lifted his head to see Lareaux standing, rolling up his sleeves. On the inside of either wrist were vicious burn scars, running up his arms and disappearing under his shirt.
"Your 'accident'," Remus said.
"A souvenir from my would-be blackmailers." Lareaux smiled. "When the boys play Scars, I always win."
"Scars?"
"Did you never play Scars? You show a scar, and tell a story."
Remus gave a low, pained chuckle and stood. He undid his cuffs, setting the links carefully on his desk, and began unbuttoning the light linen dress shirt with one hand, untucking it from its neat folds with the other. In one swift movement, he opened it and dropped it off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.
"Oh -- putain," Lareaux gasped, as the light from the candles and lamps threw shadows across the scars around his ribcage, over his shoulders and down his arms. "Nom de Dieu."
Remus held up his hands and smiled just slightly.
"The Dark Lord?" Lareaux asked, stepping closer to examine him. "Scratches -- wild animals -- or a whip?"
"Does it matter?" Remus replied. Lareaux lifted his head, and he suddenly realised how close they were. Lareaux's hand hovered over his abdomen, almost touching the score-marks on the tender belly-flesh, and their eyes met. "I didn't ask what your blackmail was," he said in a hushed voice. Lareaux closed his eyes, swaying. His breath smelled of the peach liqueur they'd been drinking, not entirely unpleasantly.
"Je suis un pédé," he said, eyes still closed.
"I don't know what that means," Remus answered, surprised at the hoarseness in his own voice.
"Pédé," Lareaux almost spat. "Homosexual. There were photographs -- damning evidence -- "
Remus tried to remember how to breathe, but Lareaux had swayed forward, and his hand was touching Remus' skin, splaying across the scars.
"So I fled," Lareaux continued. His eyes opened, brilliant green, slightly unfocused. "As did you."
Remus didn't move as the other man hesitantly ducked his head closer, kissing him gently. The hand on his stomach pressed harder, as if Lareaux were trying to push him away at the same time they kissed.
There had been furtive nights at Hogwarts, twice with James and once with Sirius, when they were too young to care or think about what they were doing, and Remus wasn't entirely unclear on the concept. He lifted his hand to Gabriel Lareaux's neck and let his thumb stroke the sensitive skin just in front of the ear, below the temple. Lareaux gasped against his lips.
"Et vous aussi?" Lareaux asked, tongue slipping over his lips, parting Remus'. Remus didn't reply.
Then suddenly he was being pushed back onto his own bed in a tumble of touches and gasping breaths and kisses, he was slipping his hands under Lareaux's scarlet shirt and Lareaux was casting his belt aside, nearly drawing the breath from his body with the force of his kisses. They grappled, made frantic by anger and pain, lust welling up in a sudden flash that made Remus moan and arch against the man straddling him, slide his hands up Lareaux's well-muscled back (feeling other rough-scarred skin on his shoulderblades) and taste the sweet peach warmth of his mouth.
Lareaux muttered something else in French as their bodies thrust together, but Remus didn't understand it; it was muffled against his skin as Lareaux kissed and bit at his neck. He sat up long enough for Remus to pull the shirt over his head, and the shift in pressure from lying to sitting made Remus jerk and moan.
"Too much work," Lareaux said, scrabbling for his wand. "Nudite," he said, drawing it down Remus' chest and then his own. Their remaining clothing vanished -- Remus thought he heard a soft pop as it reappeared on the floor.
Lareaux looked down at him, eyes now a dark jade colour. Remus closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow, his chin tilt upwards a little, and was rewarded with Lareaux's fingers tracing a line over his lips, down through the hollows of his throat.
"Please," he begged, and heard a low chuckle.
"Mon Anglais," Lareaux said. "You are like the Yankees. So quick, everything must be done now..."
He bent and kissed his lips, and Remus bucked against the heavy weight on his thighs. Since -- no, it was not right to blame that Hallowe'en for everything -- maybe even before the deaths of Lily and James, sex just hadn't been that important. Leisurely relationships were things that happened to other people. Find someone, get rid of the urge, go back to one's life; libido was one more complication he wished he could have lived without. He'd never been particularly passionate, because in the back of his mind he knew he was always going to have to end it before the next full moon.
That was why it had been so good with Sirius and James, because he'd known that in the morning they'd still be there, still be his Padfoot and his Prongs. At least that was what he told himself to explain why it had been so much better with Sirius and James. Better than with girls.
It had never occurred to him to think, Je suis un pédé. Though he suspected that pédé was a rather filthy word and probably not the one he'd use anyway.
"Remus," Lareaux said softly, and he returned to the present to find that he was being watched, warily.
"Gabriel, please," he whispered. At the sound of his name, Lareaux smiled.
"I was named for an angel," he said, bending slowly until they were body-to-body, kissing leisurely.
"I was named for a conqueror," Remus answered.
Lareaux -- Gabriel -- made small sounds of pleasure, deep in his throat, as they kissed. He closed his eyes, moaned in appreciation, moved a little so that Remus' breath hitched and he clutched his shoulders, arms curled around his back. He kissed the places between his fingers, noticing that the peculiar burn scars ran all the way up, over shoulders and down across the shoulderblades. Gabriel twitched when he slipped his hands across them.
"The nerves, you see," he muttered, between kisses and moans. "Close to the surface."
"Almost exposed," Remus replied, wondering if they were still talking about the scars.
Gabriel moved, then, setting a slow rhythm with the thrust of his hips, laughing as Remus instinctively moved more quickly, propping himself up so that they could see each other clearly. Even with Sirius, who was Experienced In These Things, it had never been so good.
Then the glorious, warm, heavy pressure was moving, and Remus tangled his hands in Gabriel's hair as the other man kissed his hipbone, his thigh. He lapped lazily at the head of his cock, and Remus thought he might die if he didn't --
But then Gabriel slid his lips down and sighed, lightly. Remus bucked up into his mouth, back arching, almost writhing with pleasure, as Gabriel's hands stroked his thighs and Gabriel's mouth stroked his cock and Gabriel, please, Gabriel.
He felt Gabriel pull away even as he begged again, and thought, almost detachedly, that he didn't know a man could hover on the brink of orgasm this long. The warm pressure of the other man's body crept up again, curling against the right side of his body. A kiss was pressed to his temple.
"Remus," Gabriel whispered, settling himself with his back against Remus' side, head pillowed on his shoulder. If he turned his head he could see the marks down his shoulderblades, deeper there, gouged -- as if he'd had wings, Remus thought dizzily, and they'd been cut out.
Angel Gabriel. Remus smiled.
"There is a spell -- " Gabriel said hesitantly, and Remus cut him off with the words before he could recite them himself. He slid a hand over Gabriel's hip, down his thigh and back up, over his arse, recalling this vaguely. He slipped two fingers inside the other man, slowly, and Gabriel gasped and swore in French.
"Slowly," he managed, in English, and Remus nodded as he pressed against him, inside him, oh god, oh god...
Gabriel's deep, sensuous voice filled his ears as he moved, faster now, one hand securing the other man's hips, one drifting over his waist to find his cock, stroke it lightly, and it was Gabriel's turn to writhe and demand more, faster. Remus pressed his face to Gabriel's shoulder, body shuddering in pleasure, unsure what was now him and what was Gabriel, wanting release and oblivion from the world, for a little while --
He felt his body tense and release, and whined softly. Gabriel jerked against him and moaned low, coming over his hand.
Remus matched his breathing to Gabriel's, loosening his embrace a little. The other man turned, almost in his arms, and kissed him. Their bodies pressed together again, this time in comfort.
"Merci," Gabriel whispered, as Remus muttered a cleaning spell. He reached up to stroke the ridge of Remus' cheekbone with his thumb, kissing his lips soundly.
"You'll have to teach me more French," Remus said sleepily, wanting to enjoy the warm and the sensation of skin-against-his for as long as it would last.
"Why?" Gabriel asked, amused.
"So I can understand what you're saying when you swear like that," Remus answered, and Gabriel snorted against his shoulder.
"I have taught you fencing, and now you want French. You must teach me something," Gabriel announced, sucking gently on the sensitive skin of his jaw.
"Anything," Remus murmured. He moved away briefly, kicking the covers of the bed up so that they could slip underneath them, into a warm cocoon that was him and the feel of Gabriel's skin, the smell of him, the taste of his mouth, still like peaches but also rather salty, like the skin he seemed determined to kiss every inch of.
"I had not intended this day -- " Gabriel said softly, and then closed his eyes. "I had not intended a day, a chosen day, but I had thought..."
Remus tilted his head against the pillow, confused.
"When you arrived I thought, aha, this Englishman, surely I will hate him, the English, they are boors," Gabriel continued. "But you were polite. Distant. The others called it cold."
"I know," Remus murmured, and he had; he'd known that his disinclination to laugh and his awkward inability to make conversation had made some of the teachers think he was cold to the point of rudeness.
"They did not look in your eyes, they did not see -- like a hurt animal which refuses to cry out," Gabriel continued. His voice was low, gentle, and even; Remus felt he might get lost in that voice. "I saw. I thought, there is in this man more than he wishes to be seen. I thought perhaps you were like me, but -- I did not want -- "
Remus pulled him closer, nuzzling against his cheek.
"We do not give up our secrets lightly. Nor will we give up each others'," Gabriel said sleepily. Remus felt a twinge of guilt, because he still had the deepest secret of all, but he covered it by kissing the other man, affectionately. They were both half-alseep already, as they kissed, and the warm press of another body against him followed him into untroubled dreams.