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Assistant: Title: Hey, Sharpshooter
        Author: tortoisebore tortoisebore 
        Chapter: 4/11 
        Summary: Sirius is a figure skater with a penchant for tricky choreography and late night walks around campus.Remus is a basketball player trying to make it to the end of his last season without clawing his eyes out.Basically it's that likeafunerall fan art but make it collegiate athletics in Boston.
        Contents: Chapter 4: All My Ghosts
    

    

        
          
          
            Regretting, remembering, and getting ready to jump.
          
        

      
        
          the first of a couple of solo pov chapters! have fun lolololol
            
            (See the end of the chapter for  more notes.)
            
      
  

  
  
    
    Remus woke up the next morning without a headache, but with a wave of blinding nausea rolling in his stomach. He’d forgotten to shut the blinds in his room before passing out the night before and opened his eyes to a f@ck@ng brutal ray of sunlight nailing his face. He groaned, shut his eyes fast and rolled over to try and get his bearings. He wasn’t hungover, he’d really barely been drunk last night, but there was a persistent, heavy pit in his stomach. It felt a lot like dread, a lot like anxiety, so he took a breath and groggily filtered through his memories of the night before for the source.He remembered meeting Lily and Peter at the station, and Peter waxing melancholy about one of his midterms. He remembered James, and he remembered Dorcas and Marlene meeting them at the bar, and the table in the corner.Mostly he remembered Sirius—the tiny braids in his hair, the glitter on his eyes, the  devastating  dip of his waist in that tight, slinky shirt—and he remembered staring. Remus had  stared  at Sirius practically the entire night; on the train, across the table, at the bar—He sat up fast, immediately regretting it when his stomach lurched with the movement, and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes until he saw stars.It was all filtering back in waves, now. He felt alarmingly close to throwing up remembering the way he’d so casually come out to Sirius at the bar, the way he’d taken his face in his hands back at the table, actually  held  him, brushed a stray bit of glitter off the bridge of his nose as an excuse to pull him closer. Remus didn’t remember what they’d been talking about before, just that he’d been drunk on enough dark rum to want to  touch  Sirius—to want to drag a thumb across his bitten-red bottom lip, maybe press it against his tongue, to tip his head back and watch his pretty, glittery eyes go dark.He hadn't done any of that, thank  god, but in hindsight he was sure it had been written all over his face.Sober Remus was dangerously close to having a full on breakdown about it—what the hell had been going on in his head for him to think it was okay to touch Sirius at all while inebriated, let alone  grab his f@ck@ng face?—but Drunk Remus would have been content to stay there all night, brushing his fingers across the soft skin just below Sirius’ jaw, feeling his pulse flutter away beneath his hand.  Embarrassment crept up his spine. He was debating putting an end to his misery and jumping straight out of his bedroom window—four stories would do the trick, right?—when his phone buzzed from his nightstand. Remus looked up blearily, blinking the stars out of his eyes, and stared at it for several long moments. It vibrated again, and again, and he finally gave in and reached for it when the notifications started coming so fast that his phone threatened to buzz right off the side table to the floor. At first it looked like several texts from one unknown number with some 212 area code he’d never seen before, but upon further scrolling ended up being an absolutely chaotic  group chat. Remus debated immediately leaving the conversation and deleting all traces of it, but managed to catch Dorcas’ name within the mayhem of notifications and scrolled to the top of the thread.   
  
7 People

Today 8:49 AM
<PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PHONE_NUMBER>
Adding Remus to the group!!!
Bill’s on Tuesday at 7:30 to celebrate Wormy’s midterm!!!!

 Remus frowned. What the f@ck was a  Wormy —  
  
7 People

Today 8:49 AM
<PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PHONE_NUMBER>
Adding Remus to the group!!!
Bill’s on Tuesday at 7:30 to celebrate Wormy’s midterm!!!!
Dorcas Meadowes
Too f@ck@ng early for exclamation marks James jfc

 It was a rare thing for Dorcas to respond to any kind of message before ten in the morning, but here she was. He found both Marlene and Sirius’ contacts in the thread too—Marlene lamenting the choice of bar and Sirius spamming the thread with ten separate texts in a row that just said "yes." That left the two remaining unsaved numbers as James and Peter, and context clues provided the devastating discovery that  Wormy  was some kind of horrific nickname for poor Peter.Remus worked to think of an excuse for an embarrassingly long time—long enough that Peter had started off on a choppy soliloquy about his impending doom (re: midterm) and that it was only right they all go to his favorite bar after the exam, and Dorcas had begun throwing some frankly  foul  curses at him between messages and insisting they go somewhere else. There was no way Remus was going. The pit in his stomach was still there, lurching at the thought of a repeat of the disastrous night before, of having to act normal when he felt on the verge of a meltdown. Tuesday nights were when he usually met Sirius, too— Sh@t, what if this was all an elaborate plan for Sirius to be able to bail on him without  actually  bailing? Maybe he’d told James all about how Remus had grabbed him at the bar and they’d put together a group thing to get out of it, to get Sirius out of having to be alone with him, to stage some sort of mortifying intervention to drive Sirius’ disinterest and ultimate rejection through his skull. Some remaining rational part of his brain told him he was being ridiculous, that of course a night out to celebrate Peter’s midterm wasn’t an elaborate ruse for Sirius to get away from him, but the rest of him was conditioned to expect apathy from the person he loved. Not that he  loved—No, that was definitely,  definitely  the wrong word, but one he felt entirely incapable of correcting at the moment.Where was he meant to go from here? He could see the way this would unfold, it was already happening—falling back into old patterns he’d tried so hard to break away from, hiding the affectionate, vulnerable things still lodged stubbornly in his chest even after they’d been chewed up and spit out, pretending it didn’t hurt when the person he wanted was indifferent at best and resentful at worst.A familiar, grating voice rang in his ears and suddenly he was eighteen again, spiraling, every part of him shrinking smaller and smaller again under warped, sharp words he hadn’t heard in years but that came back with vivid clarity—telling him to "stop being so clingy, god," and that he "shouldn’t take it so seriously, Remus, it’s not like we’re together—"It took him several seconds to notice that his phone was vibrating in his hand. He blinked hard, tried to get his eyes to focus, and held a long breath when his head cleared enough for him to notice he’d been on the verge of a panic attack. It’d been well over a year since he’d spiraled like that, even longer since that specific voice had been the source of the panic, and he had a moment to feel a little stupid about the whole thing before nearly jumping out of his skin when he looked down and saw Sirius’ name lit up on his phone screen. For a split second, he debated letting it ring. Then he almost dropped it in his haste to answer, suddenly aware that it’d been ringing for quite a long time, and his fingers trembled a little as he brought it to his ear. Surely Sirius was expecting some kind of apology, maybe calling to tell him off or make him explain what had happened—“Hello—”“Don’t you f@ck@ng  dare  try to get out of this, Remus, I know you’re free on Tuesday.”Every word on Remus’ tongue died. He blanched, tried to reset.  “What?” “I know you’re not responding because you’re trying to think of an excuse to not come, I’m telling you right now I will  drag  you out of your house if you try to get out of it.”And just like that, every trace of fear was gone. Instantly, miraculously,  blessedly  gone. He should’ve known. The ghosts that lurked in the back of Remus’ head were still there—might always be there, shadowing the faces of people he passed on the street or terrorizing his peripheral when voices sounded a little too familiar—but Sirius was different. He’d always been different. It was in the way he laughed and the way he spoke, the way he listened and watched, in the way he reached out and touched without a second thought. Remus had known fear for a long time, especially when it came to caring for other people, but there wasn’t room for fear with Sirius. Not anymore.He bit back a smile, rubbed at his eyes and sighed, hoping it sounded a little less relieved than he felt. “I don’t know, I really need to finish this essay I’ve been working on—”“Shut up, you’re coming.”“It’s a really important essay.”Sirius scoffed. “About  what?” “Jude the Obscure. It’s this book from the late 1800s—”“I know what  Jude the Obscure  is, Remus, I’ve read it,” he said loftily. “You have?”“Of course. I read it in high school.”“What the hell kind of high school were you going to that had Jude the Obscure on the reading list?”“Unimportant.” “Wait, you went school with James—has  he  read—”“No, he hasn’t. I read it as a freshman and we didn’t go to school together then.” “You read it as a freshman? Wait, I thought you and James met in middle school—”“Remus,  I didn’t call to talk about  school!” “Why did you call, then?”“To make sure you’re not going to pull a  you  and try to get out of coming on Tuesday.”Remus tried to sound perturbed, even managed to scoff through his smile. “What do you mean pull a me?” “You know,  pull a you!”  His stomach fluttered because he could  hear  the grin in Sirius’ voice, could picture the exact quirk of his lips and the teasing flash of his eyes. “Duck out of having fun by insisting you have  schoolwork,  or  practice,  or a game— ”“I  do  have all of those things.”“Not every day.”“It’s pretty much every day.”“Then how on earth do you manage to find all that free time to come walking with me?” 
   Oh.  
F@ck.“I—” Remus hesitated, fumbled for words, tried to think of some kind of halfhearted insult he could hurl at Sirius as a diversion, and came up with nothing. “Exactly.” “F@ck off,” Remus grumbled, but it was void of any real malice because Sirius was laughing, light and teasing and  perfect. “Well, what if I told you I’ll be there?” Sirius asked. “I imagine that’ll sway your decision.” Remus’ stomach twisted.  It absolutely sways my decision,  he thought, but bit his tongue fast to keep the words in. He was doing that a lot lately—barely catching himself from saying all the sticky sweet things that seemed to have set up permanent shop in the spaces between his ribs. Any day now, he was sure he’d open his mouth to find indentations of his teeth stamped into his tongue—tiny ridges in the flesh acting as physical proof of all the soft and adoring things that lived just above his lungs and had to be wrangled back down his throat every time Sirius so much as acknowledged he existed. He sunk his teeth into his tongue again, and used the sting to get a train of thought moving again. “You think so?”“I know so.” “And why is that?”“Something to do with the whole  suddenly having loads of free time  thing, I’m sure.” He tried, failed, to keep the smile out of his voice. “You know, I had that free time before. It didn’t magically appear when you showed up.”“Mhm, but somehow that free time was never really  free  until quite recently, was it?”“Where’d you hear that?”“Little birdie told me.”“Talking to your friends about me, huh?” “My friends that also happen to be your friends? Yes, I do talk to them about you.” “Fan behavior, Sirius.” “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Oh,  Remus was going to f@ck@ng  die.Sirius was going to kill him—any second now he’d drop dead right there on his bed with his phone to his ear and an absolute goon grin frozen onto his stupid face. He could see the obituary now—Our thoughts and prayers are with the poor, late Remus Lupin, whose heart exploded in his f@ck@ng chest because a pretty boy with a nice voice flirted with him over the phone. What a f@ck@ng loser. May he rest in peace. He let Sirius’ words settle between them for a moment, if only to catch his breath. This was  new—both the first time they’d spoken on the phone and the first time Remus was certain that Sirius was pointedly flirting. Hints of it had been there before, hanging around the edges of conversation more frequently in the last couple of weeks, but never so blatantly. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was trying to rationalize it—Sirius flirted with everyone, didn’t he?  No,  he felt his hands go clammy with the thought. No, he really didn’t.  “I’ll be there,” Remus said after a moment, letting his voice go a little softer because he  felt a little softer. “Of course you will,” Sirius replied, that smile still evident in his words. “Text the group.”“I will.”“No, no—text the group right now. I’m not letting you off the phone until you do it, I know better than that.”“I could just hang up, you know.”“You won’t.”“I wouldn’t be so sure…” Remus droned, even while tapping his phone to speaker and scrolling back to the bottom of the already miles-long group thread. “You’d never hang up on me.”He typed out a text and paused before hitting send—he didn’t want to give Sirius an excuse to hang up yet. “You’re very confident about that.”“Aren’t I always?”“Unbearably so.” “You should try it sometime.”“What, being a conceited @ssh@l@?” “Remus,” Sirius gasped. “I swear you're getting meaner by the day.  ” “Not mean, just honest.” “Just  text the f@ck@ng group,  oh my god.”“Fine,” Remus laughed, sending off the message and bringing the phone to his ear again. “There. Happy?”“Quite,” Sirius chirped. There was a brief, quiet rustling on his side, then a long sigh. “Want to walk tonight?” he asked, and oh, Remus adored him so much it f@ck@ng hurt.“Sure," he replied instantly, without thinking, but then worried that he was being too obvious. “You know, since I have so much free time lying around.”“My thoughts exactly.”“Meet at the library?”Sirius hummed a long note, seemingly weighing his options, and clicked his tongue a couple of times before saying, “I have training tonight until eight. Want to meet me there after?”“At your training?” Remus’ heart rate picked up, fluttered beneath his ribs at the thought of maybe,  maybe  getting to see Sirius skate. “Yeah. The doors will be locked that late, but I can meet you outside when I’m done?”“I’ll be there,” he replied, going for casual, but his heart was threatening to hammer straight out of his chest and his stomach was twisting so hard he felt nauseous again. “Send me the address, I don’t know if I remember how to get there.”Sirius hummed in affirmation, then his voice sounded further away, like he’d put his phone on speaker. “What are you up to today?”“You mean with all my copious amounts of free time?”“Of course.”Remus hummed, thought for a moment. “I really do need to work on that essay.” “Ugh,  lame.” “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he sighed. “Honestly, I haven’t really thought much beyond summoning the courage to get out of bed.” “Wow, the great  Remus Lupin  is still lying around in bed at nine in the morning? I expected more from you, come on—you’re wasting the day away.”“Oh, f@ck off. I’m willing to bet whatever’s in my bank account that you’re also currently wasting the day away.”Sirius was quiet for a suspicious amount of time. “What I’m doing is irrelevant.” Remus tutted, shook his head even though Sirius couldn’t see it. “Pretty hypocritical of you, don’t you think?”“I haven’t admitted to anything, Remus, you’re just freely accusing me of nonsense.”“So you’re  not  still laying in bed right now?” he asked before thinking, and the words settled instantly into a very  dangerous  image of Sirius’ hair strewn across bedsheets, faint traces of glitter and smudgy black liner from the night before on his eyes, limbs heavy with sleep but eyes bright and sharp in an imaginary dim, blue-tinted light. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Sirius said airily, and  oh, Remus needed to hang up f@ck@ng immediately.His brain wouldn’t stop, kept supplying  more  and  more  and  more—more  flashes of the contrast of Sirius’ pale skin against his own,  more  conjured images of chipped black nails digging crescent moons into his arms or threading through his hair, of darkened eyes rolling back and fluttering closed, pink lips falling open, and he  needed to hang up f@ck@ng immediately— “I never had you pegged as a liar, Sirius,” he tried, hoping to god that his voice didn’t betray the increasingly non-platonic and alarming images bouncing around in his head. “I’m disappointed in you.”He scoffed. “I’m not a  liar. I’m just very picky about the information I divulge unto the world.”“Sounds like a roundabout way of saying liar.”“Shut up. Go finish your stupid nerd essay.”“I’d love to, if you’ll stop talking long enough to let me off the phone.”“You’re quite literally the worst person on earth. I mean that.”“I’m sure you do.”“I’m going to remind you one more time, if you’re not there on Tuesday, I’ll come to your house and drag you out,” Sirius added pointedly, probably attempting to sound stern but really just making the fondness in Remus’ chest bloom brighter. “I won’t be nice about it, either.”Remus smiled, felt his stomach twist at the thought of Sirius in his apartment, in his room, and tried not to let it fluster him further. “You have no idea where I live, Sirius.”“No, but I have connections that do.”“I doubt they’d tell you.” Sirius hummed, and then his voice went low,  soft, words lilting out of the phone in a way that sent Remus’ breath stuttering out of his lungs. “You underestimate my ability to get what I want.” “No,” Remus tried to laugh, tried to keep his cool even though every inch of his skin was lighting up at the tone of Sirius’ voice in his ear, the soft cadence of his words and the implications hiding beneath them. “No, I’m very familiar with it.”“Is that so?” “Very much  so.”“Why do you say that?”“Did you not just convince me to abandon my schoolwork and go out to a sh@tty bar? On a  Tuesday night?” Sirius laughed, broke the tension a little, and Remus felt it in his chest. “I did, didn’t I?” He let out a contented sigh. “God, I’m good.”“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”Sirius scoffed, but it was broken up by a laugh he’d obviously been trying to back. “I hate you.”“Sure you do.”Sirius was quiet for a moment, and Remus pictured him on the other end of the line—phone to his ear, the remnants of a bitten back smile tugging at his lips—and felt the absence of that familiar, anxious pit in his stomach like a punch to the face.“I’ll see you tonight,” Sirius said, and his voice was casual, but the words pulled at Remus’ heart anyway. “See you tonight.”Oh  god. Remus double checked he’d actually hung up—wouldn’t that be f@ck@ng mortifying—then dropped his phone and threw himself sideways, landing face first into a pillow and letting out a long-suffering, muffled groan. His heart was pounding hard against his ribs and there was a buzz in the back of his head—one that he felt in his hands and his shoulders and at the base of his spine. His skin felt too tight and it was  hot  in his room, maybe because of the sunlight angled directly onto his bed and maybe because he could still f@ck@ng  hear  Sirius’ voice in his ear and he felt borderline delirious with it, with a  need  that sunk down into his bones and embedded itself into every tendon, every muscle, every  cell  in his body. Later, he’d probably find the mental capacity to be embarrassed that a little flirting on the phone had worked him up so much, but at that moment all he could think of was how badly he  wanted.He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, digging his hands into his hair, and held his breath for a long moment. For about ten whole seconds, he really, truly did try to ignore the sticky heat crawling under his skin, tried to get his mind back, but decided rather quickly that he was only human, and if he was going to be any kind of productive today, it had to be dealt with. Really, it was all for the sake of his  Jude the Obscure  essay. He was just being responsible—scholarly, even.That’s what he was going to tell himself, anyway. He’d blame it all on his restless imagination later, when the entire bathroom was a foggy, muggy nightmare because he’d lost track of time in favor of leaning his forehead against the shower wall for the better part of half an hour, letting the water go lukewarm on the back of his neck and closing his eyes to dizzying images of his fingers circling a pale throat, red and purple bruises in the shape of his teeth blooming on collarbones and hip bones and everywhere in between, his own breath hitching against wet tiles as he imagined familiar painted nails dragging down his back, lips on his jaw and a breathless, whiny voice pleading in his ear. "Remus," it repeated, silky soft and desperate, rippling in goosebumps against his skin, "Remus, please, more—"Yes, obviously it was all his overactive imagination’s fault.A couple of hours later, when his skin felt a little less tight and he was no longer at risk of being eaten alive by the memory of Sirius’ voice through the tinny speaker of his phone, he sat at his tiny, dinky dining table-turned-desk and stared at the open email on his laptop blankly.  
   Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into The New School’s Graduate College of Arts and Sciences on contingency of your undergraduate graduation and final transcripts. Please find attached a list of next steps— 
 He reread it again, and again, and one more time before deciding that it was, in fact, real, and deciding that there was absolutely no way that it wasn’t sent by mistake.“Lily, I wasn’t supposed to get in,” he wheezed into his phone, still staring at the email, rubbing his fingers hard into his temple. “What do you mean you weren’t supposed to get in?” she asked, a hint of amusement in her voice, and  oh no, Remus couldn’t do  amusement  right now.“I’m not kidding,” he near-whined, scrolling through the message again frantically. “I  barely  met the admission requirements. Like,  barely—by the skin of my teeth. It was a f@ck@ng  throwaway application—” “Okay, okay,” Lily chided. “I’ve got it. You weren’t supposed to get in. But you did, Remus, so what’s the problem?”“I don’t—” he huffed, held a long breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”“What do you mean?”“It’s a  teaching  program.”“Oh,” Lily breathed, seemingly finally on the same page with Remus’ impending meltdown, and sighed. “Well, now that you got in, what are you thinking?”“I hadn’t made a decision yet,” he said wearily. “I only applied for one teaching program, the rest have all been on track for publishing and editing. I think—I guess I specifically applied to this one because I thought I wouldn’t get in. I don’t know if I  wanted  to get in.”“So you picked a difficult teaching program to apply to on purpose?”“Yeah, I think I did,” he gave in. “I don’t even think I realized that’s what I was doing.”“And you’re panicking because you still don’t know what you want to do?”“Yes,” he replied sheepishly, a little humiliated at how worked up he was over this, and closed his eyes to stave off an impending headache. “That’s okay, Remus,” Lily said gently, and he sort of felt like he could cry. “It’s okay to not know what you want to do yet. It’s still early, you have almost an entire year before you’ll be starting any kind of graduate program. You don’t have to choose now.”“Yeah,” he breathed, swallowed hard around a sudden lump in his throat. “You’re right.”“Just take it day by day, okay?”“Okay.”“Whatever you choose, you’re going to be great,” she continued. “And don’t feel like you have to make this decision based on anyone else’s expectations but your own. This is a place where you need to be selfish.”He snorted a halfhearted laugh. “That sounds great until it’s time for me to tell my parents I’m not coming back.”Lily hummed a flat note and insisted, “It’s  your  life, Remus. Not theirs. You can always visit them, you can call them, write letters, whatever you feel like you need to do, but I’d hate for you to make a choice based on what you think they want and then regret it later.”“I know. They’re just—”“Trust me, I know,” Lily pushed. “I’ve told you all about my sister—she did exactly what our parents expected of her, went to the school they wanted, married who they wanted, and now she’s  miserable. She had a choice and she didn’t take it, and I would hate for that to be you,” she said. “You deserve better than that.”“What if my choice is there?” Remus asked. “What if I look through all my options and I make my own decision and end up in f@ck@ng—I don’t know.  Denver. I’m afraid I’m always going to think it was  them  making that choice, even if I thought it was me.”“It’s a complicated decision to make no matter what. It's a big deal. But I know you, and I know that  I trust your gut, so you should, too.”“I don’t think leaving this to a  gut decision  is the best call—”“I think this is the absolute best time to make a gut decision,” Lily said simply. “Remus, you’re not reckless. You don’t do things without thinking, you’re not irresponsible.  Trust yourself.” “The only thing my gut is telling me right now is that I shouldn’t have gotten into that program,” he mumbled,  quickly, because he knew Lily was about to give him a world of sh@t for it. “Oh, shut  up,” she snapped. “You’re the  exact  kind of person that should have gotten in and you know that.”“I really don’t think—”“Your transcript is absolutely  flawless,” she started. “You have a ton of teaching experience with tutoring and working at the writing center, you got a  glowing  recommendation letter from the dean—Remus, you’re  absurdly  qualified for this.”He was silent for a moment, trying to take in what she was saying, but finding it hard to worm anything past the very loud and very annoying voice in his head telling him he didn’t deserve to have this. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter  why  you got in,” Lily said, and her voice went a little softer, like she already knew he was on the verge of a breakdown. “You did it. You’re in if you want it. That’s all that matters.”“Okay,” Remus sighed, dropping his hand from his forehead and switching tabs to his  Jude the Obscure  essay. The acceptance email needed to be out of sight for a while. “Thank you, Lily, really. I was about to really go off the rails, I think.”“I could tell,” she laughed. “You don’t freak out often, but when you do, it’s quite the event.”“Yeah, yeah,” he droned. “Thank you. Really.”“Anytime,” she chirped. “What are you doing today?” he asked, desperate to throw his thoughts anywhere else.“James has a game this afternoon, so I’m headed there in a bit. Then I  really  need to finish this essay for Dr. Nelson.”“God  , I’ve been working on that all morning,” Remus huffed, scrolling through his current draft with distaste. “Why the hell did I choose  Jude the Obscure?” “Because you have a death wish?”“Apparently.”“You should take a break for a while,” she suggested. “Get out of the house for a few hours, then come back to it.”“I’m meeting Sirius later,” he said flippantly, “so I’m trying to get my first draft done before that, then start editing when I get back.”
  “Oh?” 
Remus could hear the smile in her voice. He frowned. “Don’t do this.”“I’m not doing anything!” she defended. “Honest.”“Yeah, sure.”“What are you two doing?”“I’m meeting him at his training place, then we’re going to walk for a while,” he said. “There’s a neighborhood in Cambridge we’ve gone through a few times that I think he wants to go back to—”“Wait, wait—” Lily cut in. “You’re meeting him  at  his training?” “Yes?” Remus answered hesitantly. “Did you like,  offer  to meet him there?” she asked, and Remus had a feeling she was looking for a specific answer, but he had no idea what it was. “No, he asked.”Lily was quiet for a moment. “He  asked?”“Yes?” Remus frowned again. “What’s going—”“Let me get this straight,” she continued. “Sirius  asked  you to meet him at his skating practice,  right after  he was done, so you could go walk around that neighborhood in Cambridge together?”Remus hesitated. “Yes? Do you know the neighborhood?”“I’ve heard all about the neighborhood,” she answered incredulously. “I’m just—surprised.”“Why?”“He doesn’t usually—” She cut herself off, and Remus heard her take a breath. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just surprised.”“Okay,  that’s  not unsettling at all.”“It’s nothing bad!” she laughed. “I promise. If anything, it's the opposite of bad.”“Yeah, okay,” he said through a reluctant smile. “I’m going to try and finish this—have fun at James’ game, tell him good luck.”“I will. You have fun with Sirius!” she added suggestively, and he made sure she knew he had rolled his eyes before hanging up. *** Later that night, after he’d finally finished the first draft of his essay, Remus stood outside Sirius’ training building twenty minutes after he was supposed to have been done, and waited. The door had been locked, like Sirius had said earlier, so he’d been standing against the brick wall for quite a while, texting Dorcas about the grad school application and trying not to let himself get anxious about the wait. He’d sent Sirius a text ten or so minutes ago and still hadn’t heard anything, but worked to convince himself that his training was probably just running long.His brain was a little jumpy anyways, what with this being the first time he’d see Sirius since the incidents last night,  and  with the absolutely f@ck@ng insane flirting on the phone earlier, and every second that ticked by was making his overactive mind assume the worst.  You’re being stood up, it said.  Of course he doesn’t actually want to be around you, you’ve f@ck@d everything up like always— “Do you need in?” He jumped a little, looked up fast to find a middle-aged man with graying hair and browline glasses ambling towards him from the sidewalk that led to the back of the building. He had on a heavy Carhartt jacket and the giant key ring clipped to his belt jingled noisily as he walked. “Oh, I’m—“ Remus pushed back from the wall, checked the time again. “I’m just waiting for someone.”“Someone in there?” the man asked, nodding to the glass doors, a sharp Boston accent clipping the ends of his words.“Yes.”“They know you’re here?”“Yeah,” Remus nodded, resisting the urge to check his phone again. “He’s just running late.”The man used a keycard on the end of the lanyard around his neck to buzz into the lobby doors and nodded inside.“Well come on, then,” he urged, holding the door open. Remus hesitated, then followed after him.The lobby was small, consisting of a few cushioned benches along the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to the left, an empty front desk in front of a light blue-gray wall, and two dark hallways to the right. Only a few of the dozen or so can lights overhead were on, casting a warm yellow tint across the room instead of the harsh, flickering blue fluorescents Remus was used to enduring on the school’s basketball courts.“You can wait here, or the rink’s that way if you want,” the man waved in the direction of the first hallway as he started off down the second. “Thanks,” Remus called half a second late, and the man grumbled a response before disappearing around a corner. Remus stood rooted to the spot for a moment, painstakingly aware that he was  not  supposed to be there, and debated retreating back outside before he heard voices echoing down the first hallway. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he was well enough acquainted with Sirius’ voice to know that one of them was him, and he wasn’t happy.Another sharper voice rang out after a moment, and Remus thought he could make out a faint ‘try it again,’  before the room went quiet. Then music started, and Remus’ stomach dropped.He’d only heard the song once, but he’d know it anywhere. It was the one Sirius had played when he’d met Remus after practice a couple of weeks before—the first time Remus had needed to dig his nails into his palm to keep himself from reaching out and touching the rays of gold light on Sirius’ face.Again, part of his brain thought maybe he should just leave and wait outside, but his feet were already moving slowly in the direction of the first dark hallway.There were a few white doors on the right side of the hall, and halfway down the length of the left wall, it turned to glass. Bright white light spilled across the floor and the music was getting louder, and Remus’ stupid heart was f@ck@ng  racing  in his chest, and he took a step past the glass as the punchy drums leading into what he knew to be the chorus started.The bright light of the rink felt blinding compared to the darkened hall, and Remus had to blink a few times to get his eyes to adjust. At first he didn’t see anyone, just rows of empty stands lining a massive rink, but then he spotted a figure leaning against the waist-high barrier around the ice. He could only see half of their face but he guessed it was Minnie from Sirius’ descriptions of her various North Face jackets, giant, ever-present knit scarves, and graying hair. Remus followed her eye line across the ice and stopped in his tracks.It took roughly two seconds of watching Sirius skate for all the air to punch out of Remus’ lungs.He’d been picturing this exact moment since the first night they’d met. Remus knew embarrassingly little about figure skating, but he knew Sirius had to be good. Better than good—he’d had a hunch since that first night that he was f@ck@ng incredible, but had no idea what  incredible  might look like. Whatever he’d been expecting was so wholly inadequate it was almost f@ck@ng funny. The first thing he saw Sirius do was land a jump. It shouldn’t have been possible, the ease with which he balanced and curved into the next move from so high, from spinning so fast, but he did. Pieces of that coveted moment outside the locker rooms after practice came back to Remus, then—Sirius leaning against the wall, standing close, bathed in golden light as this specific part of the song played and he whispered ‘this part’s fun.’His hair was piled messily into a bun that seemed to be on its last legs, several of those infuriating shorter bits around his face and at the nape of his neck whipping around as he moved. A black compression shirt clung to his arms, his waist—Christ, this was yesterday in Brighton all over again—but he wasn’t still long enough for Remus to fully take it in. Sirius was in constant explosive,  controlled  motion, gliding in zig-zagged curves across the ice, arms pushing long lines down with the music, then rounding out as he cut a sharp corner at the far end of the rink. Remus felt his eyes burn but he didn’t want to blink, couldn’t risk missing even a single millisecond of what was happening in front of him.Sirius moved on the ice exactly like he moved off of it. Calculated but impossibly effortless, fast turns and sharp extensions that flipped to something soft before the blow could land, meticulous and spontaneous and f@ck@ng  gorgeous, every bit of him.Unthinkingly, Remus kept moving up the glass wall towards the open entrance of the arena—slowly, because he couldn’t rip his eyes off of Sirius’ form long enough to watch where he was going. The song slowed and broke down to atmospheric reverb, bass undulating through the floor as it transitioned into the chorus, and Sirius was on his side of the rink now,  closer  , close enough that Remus could make out the flush on his cheeks and hear every scrape of his skates on the ice.  He was barely mouthing the words—eyes fluttering closed for a moment, hands dragging across his chest and up his neck as he rolled his head back with the music in a way that made Remus f@ck@ng  dizzy. Then he was sliding into a turn, one leg kicked out to the side and his head cocked with it, an arm climbing up as he spun, and it was all so disgustingly graceful that Remus almost felt sick. The song was coming to an end by the time he reached a break in the glass, then he was suddenly stopped in the middle of an open doorway at the foot of an empty aisle ten or so rows of tiered seats away from the rink. Sirius spun out of a series of turns so fast Remus had no idea how he was f@ck@ng  upright, then slid to his knees and arched backwards, arms cartwheeling back above his head to rest on the ice as he finally stilled and the last note echoed off the metal walls. Remus let out a breath, didn’t know when he’d held it in the first place. His head was cloudy as he watched Sirius hold the pose for a moment, breathing hard, a tantalizing strip of pale skin visible at the hem of his shirt, and Remus felt his knees go a little wobbly when he spotted the unmistakable black lines of a tattoo just inside the jut of Sirius’ hip bone. A f@ck@ng  tattoo. A tattoo that was going to haunt his every waking moment for the rest of his miserable life. He couldn’t make out what it was, didn’t have time before Sirius pushed back up to his knees and looked to his coach across the ice. She was talking, but Remus couldn’t catch a single word she was saying and frankly couldn’t give less of a sh@t about it, eyes glued to Sirius’ profile—the pink on his cheeks, the wayward strands of hair sticking to his temple, the brace of his hands on his thighs as he caught his breath and listened.  Christ,  Remus felt sick—sick with adoration and longing and that  need  that sunk down into his bones. He’d never  desired  someone like this, he realized, standing there in the empty aisle, never wanted so deeply that he felt like he could laugh and cry and fall to his knees all in the same moment. He watched Sirius get up—pushing easily to his feet and rolling his neck back as he skated around to the center of the ice again. He circled for a moment, swinging his arms, and then launched into what Remus knew now was the last bit of the choreography he’d just watched. There was no music this time, but he moved so perfectly that Remus could almost  hear  it—“Are you supposed to be here?”Remus jumped—how many f@ck@ng people were going to scare the sh@t out of him today,  god—and broke out of his ogling to find  Minnie  making her way up the incline of the aisle to the door. She raised an arched brow as she stopped a few paces away, looking all together unimpressed with his presence, and waited.“I’m—“ Remus glanced behind her, where Sirius was stopping in the middle of a turn and starting again, seemingly still oblivious to Remus’ appearance in the room. “Sorry, I’m waiting. For—““You’re  Remus,” she said matter-of-factly. He blanched, fumbled for words. “Yeah,” he tried. “Yeah—yes.”“The walking buddy.” He let out a surprised laugh. “That’s what he’s calling it?”“Afraid so,” she replied, taking half a step back and narrowing her eyes a bit. It felt a lot like she was sizing him up, and he had a split second to feel absolutely petrified before she held out a hand. “Minerva,” she nodded. “I’m Sirius’ coach.”Remus shook her hand fast, took a breath and tried to shake off the nerves. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he tried. “All terrible?”“No,” Remus blurted. “No, not at all. All good.”“I’m sure.” For a moment it looked like she might smile, but then she was turning on her heel and abruptly making her way through the open door behind him. “He’ll be done in a moment,” she called over her shoulder, then disappeared down the dark hallway and left Remus alone in the aisle again.His stomach kicked hard when he looked down to the rink and found Sirius already off the ice, leaning against the barrier and tugging his skates off. His bottom lip was pulled between his teeth and his brow was furrowed like he was in deep thought, making quick work of his laces and reaching up to brush a loose strand of hair behind his ear. This was that moment where Remus always felt nervous—the few seconds before Sirius had seen him—but it was amplified now with the lingering feeling that he  wasn't supposed to be there.  He had no f@ck@ng clue what he was going to say, didn’t really trust himself to speak at the moment, and was trying to decide if he’d be capable of silently bolting out of the room to wait outside when Sirius straightened, skates in hand, and started towards him on socked feet. He caught the exact second Sirius realized he was there—his head snapped up and he started a little, eyes going wide and lips falling open with what Remus was sure would have been a tiny, surprised gasp if he were close enough to hear it. They both froze, ten or so feet apart, and Remus’ heart threatened to beat out of his chest for the handful of seconds it was silent. “How’d—“ Sirius started, peering around to glance down the glass wall, then back at Remus. His eyes widened a little. “F@ck, what time is it?” Remus took a breath,  manually,  because now that Sirius was in front of him his lungs seemed to be giving up on the whole  breathing  thing entirely, and checked his phone halfheartedly.“8:30,” he said, but his voice did something strange and came out more strained than he’d intended. Sirius’ shoulders slumped, and he looked on the verge of an apology and Remus couldn’t  do  that right now, so he held up a hand and shook his head fast. He really didn’t f@ck@ng care what time it was. It didn’t matter. He tried to say as much, but only got out a quiet, “It doesn’t—“ before the words caught in his throat. He took another breath and started again, but instead of "it doesn’t matter," or "don’t worry about it," what came out of his mouth was, “You’re f@ck@ng  incredible, Sirius.”Which he definitely,  definitely hadn’t meant to say out loud. Sirius stared at him blankly for a moment then snorted a laugh, straightening up a bit and giving Remus a look that would have been lofty if he didn’t seem so thrown off balance. “Told you I was good,” he joked, but the smirk felt too forced to be genuine and Remus’ hands were buzzing with want, and suddenly this whole thing felt  dangerous. “No,” he shook his head. “I mean,  yeah, but you—you’re so much better than  good, oh my god, you’re—““Incredible?” Sirius taunted. “You're perfect.” Something flickered across Sirius’ face—something soft and surprised that Remus had never seen before but instantly  loved. That was a strong word, he knew it was a strong word, one that needed to be kept on a tight leash and stored somewhere far, far away from them right then, but for that split second he  felt it. Then that look was gone, and in its place something else Remus hadn’t seen before—something unsure and hesitant. “It’s not done,” Sirius said, bringing a hand up to rub awkwardly at a spot above his brow as his eyes flicked away. “We just started reworking the end today, so…it’s not done yet—”“You were perfect,”  Remus said again, and that breathlessness was still in his voice but he didn’t care because he needed to  know, Sirius needed to  know  what Remus had just seen. “F@ck, Sirius—"“It’ll be better in December,” Sirius cut in quickly. “It’s really,  really  not finished, I still have a bunch of stuff to work on.” It sounded like he was out of breath and there was a flush rising on his cheeks and Remus felt lightheaded. He dug his nails into his palms and had to bite back an honest to god  whine  because f@ck, he wanted to  reach  for him—wanted to close the space between them and drag his thumbs across the pink blooming on Sirius’ face, to push his hands under that  f@ck@ng  shirt and get his eyes on the tattoo he knew was there now, see if the pale skin of his hips would turn that same pretty pink as his cheeks if he pressed his fingers into it hard enough—“Remus,” Sirius blurted after a moment, his voice almost comically high pitched as his eyes flicked fast across Remus’ face.“What?”“F@ck@ng—” Sirius’ shoulders crawled halfway to his ears and he gestured wildly at Remus with one hand, skate flopping in the air. “Don’t look at me like that!”“Like what?” Remus asked, watching Sirius fidget and flush under his gaze, and let himself smile.Sirius narrowed his eyes and shook his skate at Remus again. “Like that!”  he exclaimed, and scowled when Remus didn’t look away. “F@ck off. You’re not supposed to do that.”“Do what?”“You’re not supposed to—” He huffed, crossed his arms, skates and all, and twisted around to look off across the rink behind him. When he turned back his brows were furrowed. “Compliment  me. Or—be nice  to me.”“I’m not supposed to be nice to you?” 
  “No.”
“Why not?”“That’s not what we  do!”  “What does that mean?”Sirius was visibly frustrated, growing more frantic by the second, and Remus would have loved nothing more than to keep him right there all night, pinning him with questions and watching him squirm.“You—god, Remus, come on, you’re supposed to tell me to shut up, or say I’m ridiculous, or something.”“Have I ever called you ridiculous?”“I mean,  no, but—""I don’t think you’re ridiculous, Sirius,” Remus said, because it was the truth, and because he wanted to see what Sirius would do with it. The reaction was immediate—Sirius’ breath caught, Remus could f@ck@ng  hear  it, and his brows furrowed again, like the whole thing was painfully confusing. Like Remus hadn’t dropped everything the second Sirius had called that morning. Like he didn’t nearly vibrate out of his skin every time Sirius so much as glanced in his direction.Like he hadn’t been obvious with his infatuation from day one.“You’re  supposed to,” Sirius tried, but his voice was going a little wobbly at the edges and he was shifting on his feet.“I don’t,” Remus said simply. It was easier to be honest when Sirius wasn’t so  Sirius, when he was thrown off balance a little. “I think you’re pretty great, actually—““No,” Sirius snapped, voice going high again, waving his hands around wildly and starting towards Remus with a vengeance. “No. You’re done. Get the f@ck out.”Remus laughed, let Sirius spin him around, plant a hand firmly between his shoulder blades and push him out to the hallway. “What is  wrong  with you right now?”“What is wrong with  you?”  Sirius all but shrieked, giving him one last half-hearted shove as they started down the hall and then falling into step beside him. “F@ck@ng—  hold that,” he huffed, hand shooting out straight to thrust his skates into Remus’ chest. “Jesus,” Remus was still laughing, f@ck@ng  giggling, couldn’t stop, because if he’d known Sirius was this easy to rile up he would’ve started  complimenting  him sooner.“Don’t touch the blades, they’re sharp,” Sirius said, softer, then huffed again once his hands were free. “And  stop f@ck@ng laughing.” “I’m not laughing,” Remus tried, biting back a smile, but then he really  wasn’t f@ck@ng laughing  because Sirius was pulling the tie out of his hair, brows still pinched down in a disgustingly cute frown. He held the band between his teeth—which was a really,  really  mean thing for him to do, actually—and Remus watched his hands thread through his hair, all chipped nails and long, fine-boned fingers, as he piled it all back up and tied it again with a quick flick of his wrist.Sirius glanced over then, arms falling back to his sides, and caught him looking. Remus’ stomach kicked, and before tonight he would have looked away fast. But things were different now. That same energy from the bar the night before, from outside the locker rooms that day after practice was bouncing around between them again. It made Remus want to  push, to test the boundaries that seemed to be blurring in front of his eyes and search for some kind of a confirmation that he wasn’t imagining the shift in the air.So this time—for the first time—he didn’t look away. He let himself look, let himself feel it all,  fully, for the first time in a long, long time.Sirius held his gaze for a moment, tried to narrow his eyes in a glare, but then he was snorting a laugh and  smiling,  smiling, smiling,  shoving Remus’ shoulder again. “I can’t f@ck@ng stand you,” he laughed, then he was crowding close and tugging his skates out of Remus’ hands, and it was a close,  close  call between Remus letting him do it and grabbing him before he could get away. Sirius was just so  soft  in the dim light, the remnants of a blush still on his cheeks, eyes bright with a trace of a smile lingering on his lips. Remus was only human, and Sirius was a  dream. “That’s my line,” he said after a beat, then clenched his fingers into fists and took a breath. Bracing for impact, maybe, because things were changing now. Some small, helpless part of him had always hoped they’d end up here—slowly barreling towards a place where he wasn’t afraid to be caught staring, where Sirius would reach out and touch and Remus would let him.In that moment, it all felt inevitable. Seeing Sirius at the game, running with him at the track, meeting him after practice, holding his face at the bar. Remus didn’t believe in fate, or destiny—didn’t really believe in  inevitability  at all—but it all felt too effortless.Surely he didn’t get to have this. Surely it didn’t get to be this easy.Something scary wormed its way into the back of his mind, then—he’d been here before, long enough ago that the pain wasn’t sharp, but the memories of it were vivid. He was still covered in the aftermath of that first year in Boston, when he’d spent his days in isolation and his nights clutching his stomach against violent onslaughts of sadness, praying to whatever deity that wanted to listen that he’d wake up and  forget. The inevitability of it all felt scary again,  terrifying, like he was perched precariously on the edge of that same bottomless void, deciding whether it’d be worth it to jump. And it  was  inevitable. It wasn’t a question—it was a matter of  when, not if. He was going to fall in love with Sirius. Maybe not right that moment, but eventually, it would come. If they kept up like this, if they kept taking hours-long walks through quiet neighborhoods in the dark, if they kept meeting at bars or their friends’ houses on the weekends, if Sirius kept talking and looking and touching and smiling and  breathing, existing—Remus was going to fall in love with him.It would be so easy. He probably wouldn’t even realize it had happened, but it would be there, strapped in beneath his ribs, pulsing in his blood, and it would  hurt.  “Give me two seconds,” Sirius said quickly, jerking Remus out of his thoughts, and  oh, he was going to have to work hard to not panic now. “I’ve just got to grab my sh@t and then we can go.”  I’m going to fall in love with you,  he thought, over and over again, watching Sirius take a sharp turn into the only open door on the left of the hall and flick on the light. Remus stood in the doorway and leaned against the frame, hoping it came across as  I’m very cool and casual and not freaking out at all  instead of  I’m about to fall the f@ck over. He very much was about to fall the f@ck over, but he couldn’t let Sirius know that—not when he looked so perfect, even under fluorescent lights, throwing his skates into a black duffel bag and tugging on the beat up Converse he wore nearly every time Remus saw him, then pulling on a vaguely familiar oversized hoodie and grabbing his phone off of the floor. He looked at the screen and winced, most likely seeing the missed texts Remus had sent earlier, and looked at him sheepishly as he threw the bag over his shoulder and started towards the door. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I had no idea it was going to go that long.”“It’s fine,” Remus said, halfway out of breath, halfway smiling as Sirius flicked off the lights and brushed his shoulder on his way out the door.He yelled a loud goodbye down the hall, supposedly to Minerva—Remus couldn’t in good conscience call her  Minnie  anymore, had lost all ability to use the nickname when he’d thought for that split second that she was going to throw him out of the building. He felt like he really needed to call her by her last name—yes, she had introduced herself as  Minerva, but surely they weren’t on a first name basis and  surely  she would hate him actually  calling  her Minerva, right? He made a mental note to ask Sirius later. There were much more pressing matters at hand today.The air was crisp and cold as they started towards their usual neighborhood—Remus’ favorite, multiple blocks of four-story brownstones, a median dividing the road lined with towering trees and wrought iron benches, sidewalks covered in orange and brown leaves and lit by tall, warm streetlights. Sirius was in the middle of trying to explain how he and Minerva were reworking the end of his new choreography when he stopped in his tracks and pointed across the street. “Wait,”  he barked, then spun his duffel around and opened a zip on the side, rooting around for a moment before pulling a bright green, nearly disintegrated punch card from the pocket triumphantly. He grinned, held it out for Remus to see, and said, “I have a free one.” Remus looked at the tiny, hole-in-the-wall convenience store Sirius had pointed to across the street, confused, searching for a single context clue and coming up empty. “A free  what?”  “A free slurpee.” Without another word, he took off across the street with a purpose, obviously expecting Remus to follow, and obviously, he did. The store was smaller up close. The front consisted of a single glass door plastered with various sun-damaged ads for beer, candy, and cigarettes, and a tiny barred window covered in some kind of yellowing film to the left. A metallic bell chimed somewhere in the back when Sirius threw open the door and Remus was hit instantly with the smoky sweet smell of cigars, then faint notes of bleach below it. Blue-tinted fluorescents flickered above them as he followed Sirius around several cramped, packed-full aisles of candy and chips to the back wall, where a soda machine and three neon-colored slush dispensers hummed noisily. It was a tight fit between the wall and the shelves of gum and magazines to their backs, so Remus watched from the side as Sirius pulled a giant styrofoam cup out of a stack next to the slush machines and made a beeline for the bright red one. The wall shook and shuddered, humming louder when he pulled the handle to fill the cup, then looked to Remus with a bright grin.“Want one?” Oh,  Remus thought again,  I’m going to fall in love with you. “No,” he laughed. “I’m good.”“If you buy nine you get one free,” he pushed, and Remus almost wanted to give in just to make him happy. “Next time,” he promised, and Sirius tutted. “Your loss.”He looked around as Sirius popped a plastic domed lid onto the styrofoam cup and unwrapped a bright blue straw to punch into it, running his finger absently across a line of keychains dangling from the beige metal end cap of the aisle, wondering how Sirius had found the store in the first place. He pictured him stopping here after trainings, going straight for the neon red and yellow slushes in the back and sipping from bright blue straws on his walks around Cambridge, maybe listening to music, maybe kicking rocks down the sidewalk, and felt his heart tug with fondness. He left the keychains and turned back down the aisle to find Sirius already looking at him, head cocked to the side a little, the faintest trace of a smile tugging at his lips around the bright blue straw. Remus’ stomach lurched, and he thought for a moment that the flush he could feel instantly on his cheeks would surely give him away entirely.“What?” he laughed, tried to play it cool, when really his heart was hammering hard and fast against his ribs. Sirius just smiled, shook his head a little and shrugged, “Nothing.” He started back down the aisle, poked Remus’ shoulder on the way, and mumbled a quiet, “let’s go,” around his straw.Remus waited near the door as Sirius talked with the cashier—an older man with a graying beard and gruff voice, who appeared from a back room in a cloud of smoke with a fat cigar between his lips. He asked Sirius if he wanted another punch card, to which he gave a vehement  yes,  and grumbled a thanks with a wave as they left the store with another metallic chime of the bell in the back. “What flavor is that?” Remus asked amusedly as they strolled down the first street of brownstones, fighting a laugh watching Sirius go after whatever bright red monstrosity was in his cup. “Cherry,” he chirped, and Remus was devastated to find that the slush was already staining his lips an enticing shade of red. “Want some?” He held the cup out expectantly and Remus wrinkled his nose. “I hate cherry,” he cringed, faking a shudder and shaking his head.Sirius scoffed. “You have absolutely no taste at all, Remus,  god.” They walked in silence for a bit, warm and easy, admiring the houses and peering into open windows for glimpses of what they looked like inside. It had been long enough since it last rained that the piles of brown leaves crunched under their feet, that being the only noise aside from the occasional passing car for several long, content moments.“Tell me something,” Sirius said after a while, taking a break from chugging his slush to glance at Remus expectantly. “Like what?”“I don’t know,” he shrugged, kicking a little brown rock on the sidewalk, tilting his head and watching it scuff the concrete before tumbling off the curb. “Whatever you want.”Remus hummed, exhibited a frankly surreal amount of willpower in looking away from the shiny red stain of Sirius’ lips, and filtered through his brain for anything even remotely interesting enough to keep Sirius’ attention.“I got into a grad school I applied for,” he tried, working to make it sound a lot more exciting than he felt about it. “Well, on contingency.”Sirius trilled around his straw, eyes widening a little in a smile, reaching out to grab Remus’ arm and jostle it a little. “That’s great!” he chimed. “What’s the program?”“It’s in English Lit, but the school does a fellowship teaching thing, too.”“What’s that mean?”“One of the graduate minors is education-based, and they have a program where students are placed at under-resourced schools around the city. So if I got into the fellowship, I’d be teaching literature while studying.”“That sounds like exactly what you wanted to do.”“Yeah, it does,” Remus gave him, trying for something neutral, but Sirius caught on immediately.“What’s wrong with it?” he asked, a confused little frown pinching his brows.“Nothing’s wrong.”“Then why do you seem so…” He paused, squinted off at the sidewalk in front of them and waved his cup around absently. “ ...lachrymose  about it?”Remus stopped in his tracks.
   Oh, no f@ck@ng way. 
“Did you just say  lachrymose?”  Sirius slowed, turning to face him and shrugging—the perfect picture of nonchalance. “Of course. It’s what you are.”Remus could have tackled him. Could have  kissed  him.“You…f@ck@ng—” He shook his hands in the air a little, feigning choking Sirius from across the sidewalk, and huffed. “You  hounded  me for carping—”“Carping is a ridiculous word.”“So is  lachrymose, you d@ckh@@d.” “You used  carping  in a casual conversation, Remus,” Sirius pointed out. Remus’ stomach fluttered—this was the closest they’d come to talking about the whole  I grabbed your face and  not  in a ‘we’re just friends’ way  thing—then Sirius bit his cherry-stained lip around a smile and Remus was annoyed again. “A  drunk  conversation, no less.”“That has nothing to do with—”“I have a theory about that, you know.” Sirius was shuffling closer, pointing with his straw and narrowing his eyes amusedly. Remus' heart leapt violently in his chest.“What’s that?”“I think,” he continued, coming to a stop less than a foot away, rolling up to his toes and leaning in, speaking low, “that if we got you drunk enough, you’d start speaking Old English.” A smile broke through Remus’ perturbed facade, just a little tug at the corner of his mouth because as much as he didn’t want it to be, it was f@ck@ng funny. Sirius knew he’d gotten him, grinned wide and fell back to his heels, and Remus  needed  to touch him.“Shut up,” he grumbled, but it was void of all malice—really just a cover for him to reach up, bring a hand to Sirius’ cheek while he sucked on his straw and shove his face to the side,  gently, because he was too pretty, too perfect to really be any kind of annoyed at.Sirius hummed low, affronted when a bit of bright red, icy slush landed just above his lip with the disruption. He glared at Remus, cursed under his breath, and Remus only had a split second to be proud of it before his eyes were glued to Sirius’ thumb, swiping at the drop of liquid just above his lip before bringing it to his mouth,  sucking  with a flash of red tongue and a little slurping noise that could’ve brought Remus to his f@ck@ng knees. He really did hate cherry, but thought vaguely that he’d surely like the taste better off of Sirius’ tongue.“Really, though,” Sirius pressed, starting off back down the sidewalk. Remus was a split second behind, too busy burning the image of Sirius’ lips around his thumb into the backs of his eyelids to notice he’d taken off again. “What’s the problem?”“I don’t know,” Remus shrugged. This was absolutely  not  what he wanted to be talking about, especially after his conversation with Lily that morning, but he didn’t know how to worm his way out of it. “There are a lot of things.”“Well, what are they? Give me a list, I know you have one.”Remus heard the laugh in his voice and threw him a withering glare. “I don’t have a list.”“I  know  you do,” Sirius pushed, still trying—and failing—to bite back a smile. “Now come on, what’s the problem?”Remus gave in eventually—of course he did. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he wasn’t capable of saying no to Sirius. He’d block out some time to panic about that later.“It’s everything,” he sighed. “I applied thinking I wasn’t going to get in, it was kind of a throw away application. I don’t—” He huffed a frustrated breath, rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn’t supposed to get in.”“Why not?”“I mean, it’s a pretty prestigious program, for one. The application alone took me two weeks to get through and I barely met the admission requirements.”“Okay,” Sirius gave him. “But you  did  get in.”“Yeah, but I don’t know  why .”“Why do you need to know why?”“Because—” He hesitated. “I just don’t understand it. I’m not exaggerating, I was  not  supposed to get in.”“But you did.”“Yes, but I don’t understand why—”“Does it  matter?”  Sirius asked incredulously. “They obviously saw something in your application that made them think you’d be a good fit for the program. Forget the  prestige  of it, forget everyone else who might have applied—they wanted  you. That’s all that matters.” Remus glanced at him, felt the anxiety that had been lodged in his throat since that morning loosen its grip a little, and felt a little embarrassed about the whole thing. “That’s what Lily said, too.”“Yeah, because she’s super f@ck@ng smart,” Sirius said simply. “And I know you’re not good at accepting compliments, but  you’re  super f@ck@ng smart, too—probably the smartest person I know.” He started to chew on his straw again, then pointed it at Remus fast, wide eyed, and added, “Do  not  tell Lily I said that, she’ll have my head.”Remus had to force a strained laugh, then bite his tongue hard. “What happened to  we’re not supposed to be nice to each other?” “This is your doing,” Sirius shrugged. “You broke the rule and now the floodgates have been opened, Remus—you’re going to be subjected to a whole lot of nice things from here on out.”“Oh, am I?”“Yes,  and—” Sirius stepped closer and nudged his arm pointedly. “When you get weird and cagey every time I say something even  remotely  complimentary about you, I want you to remember that it’s all your fault. You’re to blame.”“I don’t get weird and cagey,” Remus defended.“You absolutely do.”“How would you know? All you do is call me crazy names and complain about—”“Remus.” Sirius grabbed his arm and stopped abruptly, stood in his space and looked up at him with an expression so open and intimate that it took every bit of Remus’ breath away. He noticed vaguely that the tip of Sirius’ nose was flushed pink with the cold. “This right here—walking with you—is my favorite part of the day,” he said, so  sincerely  that Remus sort of felt like crying. “I look forward to it because I like talking to you, and being around you, and sometimes you’re the only person that listens the way I need you to.” He gripped Remus’ arm a little harder and kept their gazes locked, and somewhere in Remus’ head there were alarm bells going off with how fast he felt like he was falling; some kind of frantic, chaotic, cherry red warning that any second now he’d hit the ground so hard that his body would be reduced to nothing more than a pile of broken cells. That’d be him—an entire person deconstructed to a billion fractured atoms, floating around in space, too stupid with desire to regret that they’d jumped into the void willingly. “Oh,”  is what left his mouth, because that was the only thing really happening in his head—just a billion variations of  oh. Oh f@ck. Oh god. Oh no.  He didn’t even have the willpower to school his face into something less resembling shock, too entranced by the feeling of Sirius’ fingers pressing into his arm, just above the elbow, and the way his nose scrunched a little as he bit back a sudden smile.“See?” Sirius let go of him and stepped back, gestured up and down Remus’ frame, and said pointedly, “Weird and cagey.”A punched-out breath left his lungs and he had to laugh, had to force his body back into motion when Sirius started off down the sidewalk again. “Oh, f@ck off,” he breathed, and it almost got stuck in his throat on the way out—had to wedge its way between all the things that were scared Sirius might actually be telling the truth and all the things that wanted to ask for  more. “So we’ve gotten rid of one problem,” Sirius said easily. “You’ve been admitted. That’s great. Now what else is wrong?” F@ck. What else  is  wrong? “Um, it’s—”
   What the f@ck had they even been talking about? 
“Expensive,” is what came to mind first.  Right,  he thought,  grad school, problems with grad school—yes, expensive.  Sirius hummed a flat note and Remus was having trouble looking at him, so he decided to keep his eyes forward until his heart had returned to a pace less resembling a panicked rabbit. “That’s actually a valid problem, I’m impressed,” Sirius gave him, obviously going for a joke, and Remus had to laugh  manually, like a f@ck@ng moron. “Scholarships?”Remus shrugged. “Maybe. I won’t get their financial aid offer until next semester.”Sirius hummed a low, disappointed little note. “Loans?”“I’ll have to,” Remus gave him. “No way around it.”“Well,” Sirius sighed, and Remus still couldn’t look at him, so he made an educated guess that he was searching for some way to spin this new problem into something if not positive, then neutral. “You’ll have to get loans for any school you go to, right?”“Yeah, seems like it. I doubt I’ll be able to cover any of the programs I’m applying for with just scholarships or financial aid.”“Then this can be a problem for future Remus,” Sirius said. “There’s nothing you can really do about it until you hear from them next semester, so there’s no use worrying about it now.”“I’m really good at worrying about things now.”“Oh, I know you are,” Sirius said,  smiling, and Remus had to look at him then—couldn’t miss an opportunity to see the tug at the corner of his lip, the teasing flash of his eyes as he cocked his head sideways. “You know what James’ mom would call you?”“What’s that?”“A  worry wart,” he chided, pointing that stupid bright blue straw at Remus again. “She calls my brother the same thing. Every time we’re home she’s always giving him all these herbal teas and incense sticks for his room, making sure he’s meditating twice a day. They go on these really long walks together at Battery Park City in the summers, too—she swears up and down that being near the water helps.”Remus devoured every syllable—Sirius didn't speak often of his life outside of Boston. He always seemed to divert instantly when Remus asked about his family, and he was finding that the only way to get Sirius to talk about these things was when he brought them up himself. He had about four hundred questions, mostly having to do with it sounding like both Sirius and his brother lived with James’ family, at least during the summers, but that didn’t line up with what little he knew about his pre-college life in New York.“So what I’m hearing is that we should be walking by the river,” he said instead. Sirius snorted a laugh. “Jury’s still out on whether that's actually a valid remedy.” He elbowed Remus’ side lightly. “Next problem, go.”Remus bit back a laugh, shook his head and smiled. “You’re relentless.”“I’ve been told it’s my best quality. Now  go, we’re on a roll here.”“I guess we are,” he mumbled, fighting the overwhelming fondness threatening to flood his lungs and eat him alive. Funny, he thought, how every time he saw Sirius there was some brand new symptom of his adoration trying to kill him. “Location is the last one, I think,” he said finally, choosing to move away from the whole  existential crisis and terrifying career decisions piece of the problem. “It’s not somewhere I ever really pictured moving.”“Where’s it at?”“It’s in New York, actually.”Sirius gasped, let his mouth fall open and his eyes widen, and Remus had to fight to keep his gaze from flicking down to the bright red flash of his tongue. “In the city?”“Yeah. Near Greenwich, I think.”“Reg goes to school around there,” Sirius said. “Most of the NYU buildings are right across from Washington Square Park, it’s a great area—”“Reg?”“Oh,” Sirius straightened, blinked a few times like he hadn’t noticed he’d said the name. “Sorry—Regulus. My brother.”“Ah,” Remus nodded, tried to be casual about it when he was really internally ecstatic to receive another precious detail about Sirius’ life. “I think it’s near there—Greenwich, I mean,” he added, because Sirius seemed intent on not speaking about it any further. “I’ve never been, so I don’t have much of a frame of reference.”Then the usual Sirius was back, eyes going wide again like Remus had committed some kind of heinous atrocity against humanity, “You’ve never been to New York?”“No,” Remus laughed. “I hadn’t been east of Chicago before moving here.”“Well yeah, but it’s  New York!” He shook his head dazedly. “Everyone’s been to New York.”“Apparently not.”“Oh my god, we have to go,” he said quickly, walking a little closer. “It’s the best—oh, you would love Chelsea.” He threw an arm out to smack Remus’ shoulder a few times. “It’s my favorite neighborhood. When I move back after graduation I’m going to try and live somewhere around there, I swear on my f@ck@ng life the best ramen in the  world  is like, two blocks away from Chelsea Market.”“Is that near where you grew up?”“No,” Sirius said absently with a wave of his cup. “We lived in Lenox Hill, near Central Park.”“Was it nice?”Sirius seemed about to say something, then stopped abruptly, glancing at Remus quickly,  warily, before his face went blank and he shrugged. “It was fine.” “Doesn’t seem like it was fine,” Remus tried, making sure to keep his tone light because this was an expression he didn't recognize on Sirius—tight and shuttered, guarded in a way that he hadn't seen since that very first night they met. “It was…” He took a breath, shook his head a little. “Sort of stuffy, before I had James. Claustrophobic.”“It must have been nice to grow up in the city, though,” Remus added, but felt immediately like he’d said the wrong thing. “A lot of things to do, at least.”“We didn’t—” Sirius cut himself off again, and Remus didn’t know what to do with a hesitant Sirius, so he kept quiet. A myriad of minute expressions flickered over Sirius' face, pulling his lips into a frown and bringing that line back between his brows. “Yeah,” he said eventually, chewing on his straw and giving a nonchalant shrug again. “It was fine.”The air was strange between them, almost  awkward, which hadn’t happened in a long time. Remus hated it, felt the weight of everything Sirius wasn’t saying like a brick on his chest, and fumbled for something—anything—else to talk about. “So your brother goes to school there, still?” he asked, hoping to relieve the tension he could see near Sirius’ eyes, in his shoulders. He let out a little breath, deflated the smallest bit, and gave a tight smile. “Yeah. He studies humanities and social work at NYU.”“Does he like it?”“I think so,” he said absently, staring off unseeingly in front of them. “He—” Sirius hesitated again, glanced at Remus and let out a stuttered breath. “He skates, too. He’ll be there in December.”Remus nodded, finally able to piece together why Sirius seemed so obsessive about that specific performance and why he rarely talked about his brother—Regulus. It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume that their relationship was rather complicated, maybe a little strained, and that doing well at the competition in December was a way to keep up a certain kind of reputation. “Will you be competing against him?”“God,  no,” he implored, chewing on his straw again. “That’d be a disaster. He does the couples circuit with his partner, it’s a different category.”Remus hummed, wished he knew literally anything at all about skating, and said, “That’ll be nice to see him perform, I’m sure.”“Yeah, it will,” Sirius sighed, then tacked on, “He’s really good.”“Will your parents be there? If you’re both performing?”“James’ will,” he said tightly.“Are your parents—”“We don’t need to talk about my family.” Sirius’ voice was sharp, suddenly—jarring—left no room for Remus to argue, but he did it anyway.“It’s okay if they’re not—” “Remus.”  Sirius’ face was hard when Remus looked at him, then, but fell into something worn down, tired,  pleading, that made Remus’ chest hurt. “Please,” he said quietly, and Remus nodded. “Okay,” he said, but then Sirius was sighing, bringing a hand to rub below his eye. “I’m sorry—”“No. No—don’t be.” He shook his head a little and sent Remus a hesitant glance. “I’m  sorry. They’re just…” A pause, brows furrowed, then a frown. “It’s complicated.”“That’s okay,” Remus said, shoving his hands into his pockets and feeling a lot like he was traipsing through a minefield. “But—you know you can talk to me, right? About anything—”“You don’t want to hear about them, I promise,” Sirius laughed humorlessly. “I do if it’s bothering you.”“It’s not—” He bit his lip, clenched his jaw and let his shoulders deflate a little, and Remus heard the fight leave his voice. “I really don’t want to scare you off,” he said, and it was so quiet and empty, so  brittle  that Remus wanted to pull him in and keep him there until whatever this was passed.It was off-putting to see him like this—timid and destitute, so far from who Remus knew him to be that it was almost like looking at a different person. This new version of Sirius did nothing to deter the violently adoring things that lived in Remus’ chest, though—if anything, they grew fonder and longed to have him even more, to keep him tucked away and hidden until all the nasty things haunting his head went away. He had a feeling that not many people got to see this Sirius, the one that moved past anger and into something mournful, something  hurt, and despite the circumstances, Remus cherished the ability to know him this way. “I don’t scare easily,” Remus said quietly, hoping to lend some kind of reassurance that he wasn’t going anywhere—couldn’t even if he’d wanted to—that he would be here, always, until Sirius told him to go.Sirius looked at him, a little wary and a lot tired, chewing on the bright blue straw of his cherry slush, and gave him the smallest, sweetest little smile. Just a quick quirk of the corner of his lip, something still a little guarded, still a little morose, but just for Remus all the same.“Tell me something else,” he said after a moment, and Remus was helpless, scraped raw and boiling over and halfway in love with him, so he did.



***




Dorcas hadn’t been exaggerating—Bill’s was the most horrendous little bar Remus had ever seen. The entire place smelled like cigarettes and stale beer. His shoes stuck to the floor near the bar, and some mysterious, tacky brown varnish was embedded into every groove of their group’s long wooden table in the back. Some middle-aged Air Supply tribute band was giving a valiant effort in the corner but it was all acoustic, which was particularly devastating when they played a rocky, stripped down version of  All Out of Love  that left a ringing in Remus’ ears and a bad taste in the back of his mouth. Pete was enjoying it, at least—sat at the head of the table, three beers down only an hour after arriving, obviously feeling the tragic rendition of that poor song deep in his soul.“God, this reminds me of my first high school breakup,” Marlene groaned, rubbing her temples. “I played this corny sh@t on repeat for two months.”“Awe, babe,” Dorcas crooned, reaching over to rub her back soothingly, if a little patronizingly. “If it helps, I went on a Fleetwood Mac bender freshman year after seeing a girl for only three weeks.”“At least Fleetwood Mac is  good!”  Marlene whined, then waved in the direction of the lead singer taking a particularly generous encore. “This is just humiliating.”“I listened to  Love of My Life  for six months after my first breakup,” Sirius chimed, trying to be helpful, but only succeeding in making Marlene scowl. “Queen  is not embarrassing, Sirius,” she scoffed. “None of you are helping me, here.”“It looks like Pete’s in your same boat, Marls,” Sirius pointed out, nodding to the head of the table where Peter was clutching his chest with one hand and waving his drink in the air with the other. James patted his shoulder comfortingly. “You’re not alone in your love for Air Supply, at least.”“Sirius, I love you, but I need you to shut the f@ck up,” Marlene grumbled, taking to massaging her temples again. Remus watched Sirius bite back a laugh, then lean back in his chair and mime zipping his lips shut. He glanced at Remus with wide eyes, trying to suppress a smile, and Remus had to hide his own by taking a long drink. He’d been a little perturbed initially when the group had settled at the table and put him so far away from Sirius—across the table and two over—but upon further thought, it was probably for the best. Remus wasn’t gunning for a repeat of the Saturday before, and absolutely did  not  trust himself to keep his cool under close proximity. Sirius was wearing an oversized leather jacket and f@ck@ng fishnets beneath his ripped jeans, after all, and Remus was only human.“Why’s she sad?” James asked down the line from his place next to Peter, waving at Marlene where her head rested on her hands on the tabletop.“Air Supply’s her breakup band,” Sirius supplied unhelpfully, and James had a moment to nod knowingly before Marlene snapped back up and sent him a withering look. “It is not,” she implored. “This band just f@ck@ng sucks.”“They’re not great,” Lily agreed from next to Remus, glancing over her shoulder as the singer hiccuped his way through the outro. “Air Supply’s a great breakup band though, Marls, don’t worry.”“It’s a solid choice, really,” James added, pushing his glasses back up his nose and returning a grounding hand to Peter’s swaying shoulders. “When Lily first rejected me, I listened to this Rihanna song on repeat—”“Oh my  god,” Sirius groaned, squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t,  please. I never want to hear that song ever again.”“What song?” Dorcas asked amusedly. “Hate That I Love You ,” James, Lily, and Sirius said at the same time, all with vastly different levels of appreciation.“He played. That song,” Sirius shook his head exasperatedly. “Eight hundred  f@ck@ng  times.”“Rihanna really just  gets  me,” James shrugged, then held a hand out to Lily across the table with a smile, eyes a little glazed over from the beers he’d downed in solidarity with Pete. “I just loved you  so  much, Rihanna was the only thing that could soothe the torment of it all.”“I know you did,” Lily smiled, taking his hand between both of hers for a moment. “I’m sorry to be the source of your Rihanna-inflicted torture, Sirius.”“Wait!”  James sat up straight before Sirius could respond and looked at Remus across the table eagerly. “Remus, what's yours?”"My what?""Your breakup song," he doubled down. "Marls and Pete have Air Supply, Sirius has Queen, I have Rihanna—what's yours?""Oh, uh—" Remus stuttered, suddenly aware that the entire table—aside from poor Peter—was looking at him. He took a breath, threw himself back in time and tried to remember what he'd been listening to through high school, what albums had gotten him through those first couple of years in Boston. His stomach dropped, but he tried to keep his face neutral. "Just...the entire Grace album. The whole thing.""Jeff Buckley," Marlene swooned, throwing a hand to her heart and sighing mournfully. "Lover, You Should've Come Over.""Lilac Wine," Lily nodded in agreement."God, what kinds of breakups were you going through that Jeff Buckley was your go-to?" Sirius asked amusedly, sipping at his drink. Once again, everyone was looking at him, and once again, Remus' stomach dropped. "Well, it was...um—I've only had one.""What?" James exclaimed, wide-eyed and disheveled as he turned in his chair. "You've only had one breakup and it inspired Jeff Buckley levels of angst?""That's impressive," Marlene offered, trying for a joke, but it fell flat through the unease blooming in Remus' chest."Everyone go around—let's do worst breakups," James announced, tugging at Peter's arm until he rejoined them. "Who can beat Jeff Buckley levels of angst?"Remus sat back in his chair and held his breath as Peter launched into what was sure to be quite the winding retelling. The only person at the table that knew the ins and outs of Remus' one and only breakup was Dorcas—he’d told her after a particularly nasty low week near the end of their sophomore year, when he’d gotten word from a high school friend that his ex had returned home to Colorado Springs with what seemed to be a serious partner. Remus had spiraled, missed three deadlines in one class and one in another, skipped two consecutive practices, and didn’t leave his apartment for four days. Dorcas had been a saint about it, had helped him get back on track with schoolwork and listened to him cry on the phone no shortage of a dozen times, checked in multiple times a day for the next few weeks and never made him feel like he was being ridiculous, or overreacting.She knew it all, but she didn’t know that he’d been working through quite the mountain of triggers in the last few weeks—and that the source of those triggers was sitting next to her.Maybe he could just say that it wasn't a real breakup. Nope, it was actually just a situationship and I was being dramatic, I lose! Really, it wouldn’t even be that much of a lie—"we’re not even together, Remus" had been drilled into his skull so many times over those three years at the end of high school that he’d believed it for a long time. Surely the group was expecting something lighthearted, some fun little anecdote that they could all laugh about and wave off, maybe throw out an emphatic "it was their loss!" if the story called for it, then move on to the next mildly self-deprecating tale of young love and high school angst.His story, his breakup, was not a cute little memory he could shrug off as the result of being too young, too naive, too in love. It had been all of those things, but more—but worse.This was not something he wanted to tell everyone, not something he wanted to turn into a joke, not something he wanted to tell Sirius— “Remus!” James knocked his glass against the table and raised it in the air. “Your turn, give us the Jeff Buckley angst!”He took a breath, suddenly painfully aware that everyone was looking straight at him. He’d really not been listening since they started going around the table—he’d only heard pieces of Peter’s unfortunate and confusing tale of a girl he’d accidentally blocked the year before, and missed what James and Lily had said entirely. “Um—“ His voice broke instantly, and he cleared his throat. Dorcas caught his eye across the table and his stomach turned uncomfortably at the open concern he could see on her face. He glanced at Sirius next to her—couldn’t help it, really—and watched his eyes flick to Dorcas, studying her profile, before a frown tugged at his lips. Then his gaze was locked on Remus, all wide eyed and expectant and with a tiny line between his brows, and Remus had to look away.Dorcas leaned forward, looking down the table, and started, "Maybe we shoudn't—”“It’s fine,” Remus tried to laugh. “I’m sure it’s not as good as Pete’s, though,” he said, hoping that the tiny bit he’d heard from Peter’s story had been enough to make a joke off of, and breathed a sigh of relief when it pulled a loud laugh from James and a long-suffering groan from Peter. This shouldn’t be this hard,  Remus thought.  It’s been  years. You should be able to do this.  “There’s not much to it, really,” he started lightly, running his thumbnail across a ridge on his bottle and cherishing the cool glass against his hands. “It was right before moving here. We’d been on and off for years, it was never really official or public at all.” He swallowed hard, dug his nail into the glass. “He wasn’t out, and I found out too late that he didn’t have any plans to ever be out, so…” He cleared his throat, working hard to ignore the tightening in his lungs, willing his voice not to break. “He wanted to keep it casual, but I couldn't do it. I loved him—a lot, unfortunately, so I ended it for good before leaving. Should have ended it years before that, but you know.” He shrugged, trying for a tight smile, hoping it came across more nonchalant than it felt. "So yeah—I listened to a lot of Grace when I first moved here."The split second of silence after he’d finished was terrifying, almost as terrifying as saying it all out loud in the first place, but then James knocked his glass on the table again before raising it in the air, and smiled at him, big and warm. “And it was  his loss,” he declared earnestly. “His loss!” Peter echoed, taking a mighty gulp of his half-empty beer and shaking his head mournfully. “Really—tragic for him, Remus, you’re quite the catch.”Remus snorted a laugh, took another sip of his drink and reveled in the cold condensation on the glass, and pointedly  did not  look at Sirius. Dorcas shared a quick retelling of a girl she’d seen for a couple weeks their freshman year and didn’t know had broken things off with her, and Marlene hopped on a lengthy soliloquy of her first boyfriend in high school that decided out of the blue one day he was done with their relationship. It was really a little sad, especially when Remus pictured a fifteen-year-old version of Marlene having to go to school and see the person that had broken her heart every day, but it was soothed by the fact that she had Dorcas now, and Dorcas loved her fiercely and completely. Then he couldn’t avoid looking at Sirius anymore—had to glance at him across the table as he chewed on the inside of his lip and thought for a long moment, then huffed a sigh and said "honestly, it was f@ck@ng Ben." James had gotten all up in arms about it, had insisted it was "your fault for trying to let him down easy, Sirius!" and tutted disappointedly when Sirius waved him off flippantly. They stayed for another half hour or so—a half hour in which Remus pointedly ignored that Sirius was trying to catch his eye across the table—before Peter had drank enough water to get his wits about him again and they could leave without fear of him stumbling down the street. Dorcas caught Remus on the way out, just quickly crowded close and asked a quiet "okay?" as they made their way through the bar again. He’d nodded, sent her a reassuring smile, and found that he didn’t feel quite as shaken as he thought he would—as he might have if this had happened a month or two ago.They started off down the sidewalk in the direction of campus together, and it wasn’t a hundred feet from the bar that Sirius stopped in his tracks where he was walking with James and Peter at the front, looked back, and waited until Remus had caught up to fall into step beside him. This felt familiar, at least—Sirius on his left, the road on his right, but today Remus’ hands were buzzing and he felt a little too out of control to be perfectly comfortable with how close Sirius was walking, with the way their shoulders brushed every few steps. “So what’d you think of Bill’s?” Sirius asked, a light, teasing smile on his lips. “It sucked,” Remus replied simply, and it made Sirius laugh, that breathless one that always seemed like it took him by surprise. “Just really, really bad.”“I agree, but I’m afraid Pete’s a lost cause,” Sirius shook his head, glanced up the sidewalk at the rest of the group getting further and further ahead of them.Remus hummed halfheartedly, honestly entirely uninterested in talking about Peter right then, and let the silence stretch between them. Sirius was obviously going to bring it up, and Remus obviously wasn’t, so he waited. “I didn’t know,” Sirius said eventually, that line between his brows coming back. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket and he bit his bottom lip before his eyes flicked to Remus. “What you said before. About when you first moved here.”“Well, I didn’t tell you,” Remus said lightly, even trying for a smile. Sirius’ lips quirked and he breathed a laugh, stepping closer to nudge his elbow against Remus’ arm exasperatedly. “You know what I mean,” he murmured, so sweet and soft and  quiet, and that sticky thing in Remus’ ribs expanded, lurched with his breath into the precious little space left around his lungs. “Yeah, well,” he shrugged. “It was years ago, now.”“That doesn’t mean it’s not allowed to hurt still.”Remus looked over fast, searching Sirius’ face for any trace of a joke, any trace of lightheartedness or teasing, and found nothing. An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach—this was one of those moments when he felt a little too transparent, a little more vulnerable than he wanted to be, a little too close to being eighteen again. But it was  Sirius  next to him, so open and easy and without an ounce of pity on his beautiful face, and Remus adored him.“It’s been forever,” he pushed, because he was  over it, he really was—there were no feelings left, Sirius needed to  know that. “I’m okay. Really.”“Remus,” Sirius said pointedly, fixing him with a look and letting his lips tug up in a smile. “I know you’re the observant one here, but I see a lot more of you than you give me credit for.”Remus felt lightheaded. “Maybe I’m just really easy to read,” he tried.  Take it back, he thought.  Make a joke and take it back or I’m going to jump headfirst off the edge of this cliff and it’ll be all your fault if I break when I hit the ground. “You are to me.”Sirius seemed aware that Remus was incapable of words—another thing that would undoubtedly terrify him if he thought about it too hard. He just slowed his pace when Remus’ feet decided they needed to stop, unyielding and determined in the wake of all of Remus’ blossoming panic, his confusion, his  want. You’re not supposed to know me like this,  he thought warily.  How do you know me like this? “I’m sorry,” Sirius said, and he was softer than Remus had ever seen him—close enough that he couldn’t decide if he wanted to stare at the freckle below his eye or the the one near his jaw, the glow from the streetlights glinting in his eyes or the perfect, perfect,  perfect  curve of his lips as he spoke. “That that happened to you.” He was quiet with his honesty, Remus thought absently. Quiet with the things that mattered. The weight of it hit like an anvil to the center of his chest—he  believed  him. Wholeheartedly. Entirely.Remus was hanging on by a thread, then—positive that the cracks in his resolve were evident on his face and afraid to stay there, but more afraid to walk away. Sirius took the smallest step forward, just a scrape of his heel on the pavement, really, and Remus was falling, crumbling, shattering.He kept Remus’ gaze, and his face took on that relentless determination Remus was so used to seeing on him—jaw set, eyes sharp, but it was different this time. Something new, something breathtakingly delicate and fiercely resolute all at once—something just for Remus. When he spoke, it was in a tone that left no room for argument.
   “It was his loss.” 
It was the wind that did it, in the end—a light breeze gusting down the sidewalk around them with a chill Remus was so far from feeling, it was like it hadn’t happened. But it rustled around the ends of Sirius’ hair, and blew just enough that the shorter bit that had been tucked behind his ear fell into his face, and Remus couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried.He took the final step forward and closed the space between them, reaching up before Sirius could to brush his fingers lightly across his forehead, collecting all the wayward strands of hair with a touch  so  light—light enough that Sirius wouldn’t break under his fingers. Sirius had gone completely still, and his eyes were wide and his lips parted just a little,  just barely, and Remus didn’t know where to f@ck@ng  look . He brushed Sirius’ hair back behind his ear and it was too, too soft under his fingers, and then his eyes caught on rows of silver piercings and couldn’t move away. He tapped a finger down the side of Sirius’ ear, let it catch on each tiny little hoop and stud, and counted five before he reached the bolt of his jaw and oh, he couldn’t stop there—not with the skin he dreamed about right there in front of him, just below his fingers. Sirius seemed to have stopped breathing, which would’ve been concerning if Remus’ lungs hadn’t also decided to cease functioning. He could feel Sirius’ eyes on him, boring into his own, but he couldn’t look away from his own thumb where it was trailing a line just below the ridge of Sirius’ jaw. His chin tilted up a bit, enough that Remus heard his breath hitch just a little,  just enough—a quiet, perfect sound that lodged itself into Remus’ slow-moving, disastrous brain. He let his fingers graze Sirius’ neck, let his thumb trace a line down the middle of his throat and settle into the hollow there, press into the skin and feel the pulse flutter under his touch, and his knees went wobbly when the sweetest little whimper escaped Sirius’ parted lips.Remus’ eyes snapped up, went straight to his mouth, watched as he clicked his jaw shut and let out a shaky exhale through his nose. Then his knees were going weak all over again and he couldn’t really feel his hands because Sirius’ eyes were so, so, so  dark—darker than Remus had ever seen them, wide and sharp and stormy gray and everything that Remus imagined when he couldn’t sleep at night. They were flicking across his face fast, down to his lips and up again, and  oh,  Remus couldn’t f@ck@ng do this anymore. “Sirius,”  he breathed, because that was the only word he knew, the only one that mattered, and it felt like a prayer on his lips, a warning—Sirius Sirius Sirius. Another stuttered breath left Sirius’ lips and his throat bobbed and Remus  couldn’t f@ck@ng do it anymore—“Holy sh@t! Sirius,  look!” —but he could’ve f@ck@ng killed James, at that moment. Remus snapped his head to the side and found the rest of their group a good half block ahead of them, gathered on the sidewalk and looking off across the street to the park. James was talking animatedly, obviously in the middle of convincing Lily and the others that whatever was  at  the park needed to be visited immediately, and he yelled for Sirius again.Sirius was still looking at Remus intently when he turned back, and his stomach lurched when he noticed with a little more clarity how  close  they were standing. He took a shaky step back, felt his throat tighten when this distance meant he had to take his hand off of Sirius’ skin. The assurance and certainty he’d felt a moment before was gone, now—melting away and leaving him bare, scraped raw and a little terrified under Sirius’ gaze.James had taken to one long, continuous bellow of Sirius’ name down the street, voice echoing off the asphalt and concrete and brick buildings on either side of the road. It took a few seconds for Sirius to seem to register that it was happening—he blinked, frowned and swiveled around to find the source. “What?”  he snapped, loud and mean—brows furrowed with a scowl on his lips and oh, Remus f@ck@ng  adored him. “Come here!”  James shrieked, waving his arms around wildly and narrowly avoiding smacking the side of Peter’s head. “Oh my  f@ck@ng—” Sirius huffed, rolling his eyes and throwing his head back in annoyance. “There’s no use trying to argue with him,” he sighed, voice strained, shooting Remus a quick look that seemed more like remorse than he was prepared for. There weren’t many thoughts happening in Remus’ head at that moment because the pale, thin skin at the hollow of Sirius’ throat was pink with his thumbprint. The only actual coherent words forming in his brain were "holy f@ck@ng f@ck" and "I wonder what color it would turn if I used my teeth."“Let’s go,” Remus said instead, nodding to the sidewalk in front of them and trying to calm the buzz in his hands. It turned out to be a temporary ice rink in the park—late October seemed a little early for seasonal ice skating, but what did Remus know?—circled by tiny, alpine-esque shopping stands decorated with skeletons and spider webs and lit with flickering orange lights pinned across the surrounding trees. James insisted they stop "for just a minute, guys, come on!" and Sirius was on the bandwagon soon enough after he’d had a second to get over his annoyance with James.That was how Remus found himself standing just to the side of the rink with Lily, elbows braced on the barrier, watching James barrel past Marlene and Dorcas, nearly knocking them both off balance, then ramming straight into Sirius at full speed.Lily had opted to sit it out under insistence that she was sh@t at skating and would easily break an ankle the second she stepped foot onto the ice. Remus was also sh@t at skating, having only done it once or twice as a kid before resolutely deciding it was not at all fun, but really, he just wanted an excuse to watch Sirius. Sirius had complained loudly about the skates being too stiff, the blades too dull to do much of anything but run slow laps around the rink, but Remus was enjoying the view anyways—how could he not? The skates did look clunky and slow, but Sirius moved with the same ease Remus had seen that weekend. He helped Peter get the hang of things for a while, then did an entire lap backwards so he could talk with Marlene and Dorcas before James made a run at him.“They’re going to actually get hurt one day,” Lily scolded as they watched Sirius struggle to get out of James’ grasp, then seemingly become intent on knocking him to the ground.“Have they not already?” Remus asked absently, biting back a smile when it looked as if Sirius licked the side of James’ face, all the way from chin to temple, before worming out of his grip.“Oh, yes,” Lily sighed, shaking her head tiredly. “So many times. James has a scar on his back from something Sirius did, but he won’t tell me what it was. Said they had some kind of a blood pact and he was sworn to secrecy.”Remus snorted a laugh. “Was this recent?”“No, no—the only thing I know is that it happened when they were in high school. That’s all the information I’ve been allowed.”Remus watched James shove Sirius away, wiping harshly at the side of his face and letting loose what seemed like some very affronted, choice words at the offense. Sirius was laughing—it’d be that full, loud one if Remus were close enough to hear it—and his heart thudded against his ribs, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth against his will.“I’m going to grab a hot chocolate, want me to get you one?” Lily asked, graciously ignoring the way Remus was staring starry-eyed across the rink. “Oh—yeah, thanks.”“Marshmallows?”“Please.”“Be right back,” she chirped, heading off in the direction of the concessions stand near the entrance they’d come in.Remus found Sirius again, still grinning, skating a quick circle around James before lunging out of his reach when he tried to grab him, darting off fast and weaving through the crowd to lose him quickly.  Remus watched Sirius crane his neck around the people near him, scanning the barrier, until his eyes landed on Remus and caught for a moment. Then he was picking up speed, dodging a couple of kids going the wrong direction, and stopping so suddenly in front of Remus that the blades of his skates kicked up a plume of powdered ice. He braced his arms against the barrier just outside of Remus’ elbows, a delightful couple of inches taller when Remus was crouched down like this.“Are you really going to sit out the whole time?” he asked incredulously, a blinding grin lighting up his features, and Remus’ chest ached at how pretty he looked. He was always pretty, but in that moment it was particularly overwhelming.Remus nodded. “Yep.” He didn’t feel capable of saying much else, not when Sirius was standing so close, when he could almost  feel  his labored breath against his skin.Sirius' grin widened. “What, too chicken to try?” he taunted, brows raising a little, and Remus clenched his hands against the barrier to keep from reaching out and dragging him in. The skates would have made it all too easy—just a couple of fingers hooked through his belt loops and a sharp tug and they’d be pressed together, nose to nose, breathing the same air.Remus watched him, let himself take in the teasing glint in his eyes, the slope of his nose and the exact twist of his lips as he smiled. When he met Sirius’ eyes again, they were just a little softer around the edges, a little wider. “Something like that,” Remus said eventually, and his heart thudded in his chest at the closest thing to a confession the world was going to get out of him tonight. Sirius hummed, narrowed his eyes, and—f@ck—leaned in further, braced on his hands, making Remus’ neck tip back to meet him. “Count your days, Lupin,” he said quietly, probably meaning to be menacing but really just fanning the spark that had burned hot in Remus’ veins since he’d learned what his hand looked like around Sirius’ throat. “I’ll get you on an ice rink eventually.”“I doubt that.”“Yet again, you’re underestimating my ability to get what I want,” Sirius tutted, shaking his head a little. “I seem to do that a lot.”“You really do. I’m disappointed in you.”“That’s my line.” Remus was losing breath fast, losing control of his voice under Sirius’ stare.“Oh, really? You’ve laid claim to it?”“Seems that way.”“Just like you’ve laid claim to  carping?” Remus snorted a laugh, hung his head. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”“Afraid not.”“Any chance you’re susceptible to bribes?” Sirius hummed, bit his lip—f@ck@ng  evil—and shrugged. “Depends on the bribe.”“Well, what kind of bribes are you in the market for?”“I don’t know,” he tilted his head to the side. “It’d have to be a pretty good one to get me to forget carping.” “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”“Wait —come skate and I’ll forget all about it.”“Absolutely not.”“Remus,”  he whined. “You have to! Everyone else is out here.”“Lily’s not.”“Yeah, well, Lily’s sh@t at skating.”“So am I.”“I’ll teach you!” he chimed eagerly, straightening up a little, and Remus was tempted to give in solely for the chance to get Sirius close to him, to get his arms around his shoulders or waist to help with balance, to be able to take his hand every time he lost his footing.“Not a chance, Sirius.”He deflated again, brows pulling down in a frown. “You’re so mean.”“I’m not mean, I’m just not giving you what you want.”“I think you  want  to do it, you’re just being stubborn.”“I promise you, I do  not  want to skate.”“Well then, you want to make me happy.”Remus narrowed his eyes, tried to bite back a smile. “And why on earth would I want to do that?”“I can think of at least two reasons.”“And those are?”“Well,” he started pointedly. “I think you want to make me happy and give me what I want because if you don’t, I’ll complain about it forever. It’ll be  carping  all over again, I’ll never let you live it down.”“I’m working on a bribe for that one, remember? Now that I know you’re capable of being bought out, that one really doesn’t phase me.”“Good  f@ck@ng luck  trying to find a bribe worthy of me forgetting  carping,” Sirius laughed. “I hope you’re prepared to spend big.”“It’s the thought that counts, right?”“Not in this case. I’m demanding opulence.  Luxury.”“What’s the other reason?”Sirius went quiet, then—there was a joke in his eyes, a secret, a smile tugging wider by the second at the left corner of his lips and Remus’ stomach lurched with it. Somewhere in the back of his head he had the good sense to be afraid of whatever was about to leave Sirius’ mouth.“I’m not sure you want to hear that one,” he said lightly, voice low, and the molten heat in Remus’ veins was back. “Try me.”And oh, that was the right thing to say—Sirius’ eyes flashed and his smile twisted into a smirk before he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth. Remus couldn’t look away, let his gaze flick down to watch when Sirius let his lip go and leaned closer to speak low.“I think I want to keep it for myself,” he murmured, so close that Remus could almost feel his breath on his own lips, close enough that the heat of him could have burned Remus alive. “That’s not fair,” Remus breathed, and he didn’t even remember what they were talking about, had no clue what had gotten them here but he  needed  Sirius to stay here, stay in his space, stay close enough that if he wanted to, Remus could make one move and have his hands back on his neck, his face pulled close, could even drag his thumb across the shiny, bitten-red flush of his bottom lip. “Too bad,” Sirius said lightly. “Life’s not fair.”“What if I ask  really  nicely?”Sirius hummed a flat note, shook his head. “Not good enough.”“You have to tell me,” Remus tried, remembering a time when they’d run into Sirius’ godawful ex on a walk and he’d been told the same thing—repeatedly.“You’ll have to make me,” Sirius breathed, and Remus could’ve f@ck@ng died. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he pushed, and then Sirius was smiling again—laughing—and he was too, too,  too close, and that buzzing in Remus’ hands was back with a vengeance.Sirius paused, pulled his lip between his teeth again and hesitated, and Remus waited,  waited, felt his heart thud against every single one of his ribs, let his fingers brush and latch onto the open zipper of Sirius’ jacket, ran his thumb across the cool metal. The air shifted and changed, grew heavy, and Remus had a feeling something was  happening—And for the second time that night, Remus wanted to kill James Potter. He came out of nowhere, slammed into Sirius’ side and went careening sideways with him. Remus reeled back to avoid being hit with a wayward elbow and let out a shaky breath, blinking the fog from his eyes as James held fast to Sirius’ middle, spun them around and shouted nonsensical noises near his ear.“Oh god, not again.” Lily appeared on his right, two paper cups of hot chocolate in hand as she watched James exasperatedly. She passed Remus a cup with a small mountain of marshmallows on top and leaned against the barrier, stirring her own drink absently with a wooden stir stick. “Long line?” Remus asked, trying to play off the shakiness in his voice with what he hoped was an easy smile.“No, not at all,” Lily replied lightly, glancing at him from the corner of her eye with a conspiratorial little grin. “It seemed like you and Sirius were having a riveting conversation. I didn’t want to interrupt.”Remus ducked his head, bit back a smile, distracted himself by going after the tower of marshmallows threatening to spill over the lip of his cup. Lily read him instantly, of course she did, and hummed a laugh. She looked off across the rink for a moment, then bent a little closer and spoke lightly. “Are you ready to admit that you’re head over heels for him, or no?”Remus’ stomach lurched, and if it were last semester, even last  month, he would have tensed up. Would have shuttered immediately, refusing to acknowledge and pointedly ignoring what was obvious to everyone else, even if it meant denying it himself.But that was forever ago—a month and a half was practically a lifetime—and this was now. And it was Lily next to him, and Sirius across the ice, shoving at the side of James’ face and laughing breathlessly, and things were different.  He  was different. So he looked up, watched Sirius squirm and double over when James dug his fingers into his ribs, and then glanced at Lily. She waited expectantly, brows raised, and smiled wide when Remus ducked his head, grabbed for a marshmallow, and nodded. “Yeah,” he told her—quietly, just in case. “Yeah, I really am.”


  
  

    
      
        
        
          
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