Chapter Text
It’s the night of the full moon, and Sirius got himself a werewolf to slaughter.
Everything is ready. The family Manor in the Scottish Highlands is empty, the vast grounds deserted and warded to the teeth. Just Sirius, his heirloom silver dagger, and the unconscious man laying at his feet.
Soft curls, autumn-golden.
The handler who dropped the werewolf off specified the transformation would take place whether the man was awake or not. Such a simple task then, to bleed it and skin it and de-bone it. Sirius would have all the parts he required and enough left over for potion ingredients to last Regulus a lifetime.
The whole pleasure of it cost him less than one of his rings.
The werewolf, still in his human body, stirs on the cold stone floor of the parlour. Silver shackles on his hands, feet and neck have rubbed his skin raw red. Blood pools around it in such beautiful crimson Sirius feels the taste of it in his spine.
Sirius could let him sleep, leave him just like this, never to wake up again.
But where is the fun in that?
“Enervate,” he whispers, and the words echo in the vast room.
It takes a moment. The stunning spell the handler left the werewolf under was stronger than most. He stirs again, softly, carefully like his body had already been broken. A little sound of pain and Sirius almost responds with his own one of pleasure.
Then those eyes flutter open, once, then twice, and focus straight on Sirius. They’re the colour of autumn winds.
“What… were…” the werewolf tries to speak. The movement of his throat offsets the collar, chafes against his Adam’s Apple. He swallows down the hurt and the movement repeats.
Sirius doesn’t respond.
The werewolf feels at the collar on his neck and his fingers come away red. He notices the restraints on his limbs – the chain connecting them to a hoop in the floor. All of the metal delicate but it doesn’t need to be strong, not when just a touch of it burns through skin.
Understanding falls on his face like a curtain.
“Will you at least tell me who you are?” The werewolf’s voice is surprisingly steady.
Again, Sirius remains quiet, but he crouches down, grabs the werewolf by his face, turns it left then right. There are scars there, but there are also freckles.
The man of the moon looks like he’s been sun kissed.
“I’d like to know the name of the man planning to kill me.”
“I’m not planning,” Sirius responds, fingers still on warm skin, “I will kill you.”
“It’s not easy to kill the thing I’ll be in a few hours,” the werewolf pulls his face back, away from Sirius’ hand. Leaves his skin tingling, like fingerprints rearranging.
A curious thing – maybe to do with the coming transformation.
“Did you kidnap me yourself?”
“Why would I? There are people for that.”
“Bloody rich boy.” (Sirius laughs at the insult. It’s not often he is insulted, at least not so openly and to his face. Most fear him, as Lord Black, and rightly so.) “Did you at least get my things as well? There was a book in my bag, and I’d like to finish it.”
Now that – that is surprising. Here he stands, in front of the werewolf, as good as his executioner, as good as death itself, and the only thing the werewolf asks for is a book.
It’s been a long time since anyone surprised him.
“Sorry, but no. The people I hired burnt your belongings. Couldn’t risk you having anything traceable.” Sirius might as well be honest, he decides, “what book was it?”
The werewolf tries to move up from the floor but is pulled back down. He hisses at the burn, then at the impact his knees make against the stone.
“A Picture of Dorian Grey. I’ve put off reading it since childhood. Only had 50 pages left.”
“A shame.”
Sirius wants to leave it there. It’s an asinine conversation, one he shouldn’t be having in the first place. He needs to start tiring the werewolf out, or it’s going to be much more annoying once he transforms.
So why is he remembering the copy of the muggle book hidden deep in the shelves of the Manor’s library?
“I can tell you the ending, if you’d like,” a compromise he proposes without meaning to.
“Don’t bother. It’s not the same.”
It’s not, Sirius supposes. Nothing can compare with finishing a good book, when it has a satisfying ending. (Maybe the way a streak of blood crawls down the werewolf’s neck, pools in a hollow of a sharp collarbone, red against golden skin.)
“I’m Remus, by the way. May as well know who you’re planning to kill.”
“I’m not pla-“
“Sorry, right – not planning,” the werewolf interrupts.
The last time someone interrupted Sirius halfway through a sentence (not to mention halfway through a word), he cut off the man’s tongue. Didn’t even use magic. He pushed the annoyance onto his knees, against a table edge, grabbed his tongue out of his mouth and cut it off with his least favourite dagger.
He can’t remember what he did with the man after. Might have let him go, might have left him in a cellar somewhere. They blur together, sometimes, the people deserving of his ire.
He doesn’t do any of that now. There is no point, of course, the werewolf will be dead soon enough, and there is an unhealthy dose of torture coming his way before the moonrise anyway. But Sirius has a suspicion he wouldn’t do anything regardless, because he’s not angry, or annoyed. No - he’s amused.
Sirius gets amused… sometimes. Sporadically. When Regulus is in a strop, for example, that usually goes a long way to putting him into a good mood. Doubly so if Sirius is at fault, if he manages to push his brother’s buttons enough to make him snap or stalk off, or even leave home for a night. Then there are some plays he rather enjoys, or watching drunks as they stumble across Knockturn Alley. It’s fun, sending little hexes their way and watching them struggle to get back up.
This, however? Enjoying himself because someone at his feet is being petulant? No, this doesn’t happen. It’s unprecedented. Unpredictable. Sirius likes unpredictable, and he gets it so very rarely.
He waves his wand, a silent summon to the book. It flies to him, so very gently.
“There you go. Hope you’re a fast reader.”
***
The werewolf is a fast reader. He also fidgets, trying to get comfortable on the floor, until Sirius gets annoyed and summons a couch from the sitting room, placing it close to the werewolf so the man can sit on it.
The way he sits fascinates Sirius. The werewolf is all long, gangly limbs, like he’s been stretched too fast. He pushes into a soft corner of the sofa, folds his legs underneath himself, turns his body until his spine must be shaped like a pretzel. There is no way it’s comfortable, but he looks content. Humming softly as he turns the pages. Brow furrowing, eyes narrowing, as he gets further towards the end.
Sirius doesn’t quite know what to do about any of it, but he has two and a half hours before moonrise – plenty of time to do good on his plans.
No – not plans. “Plans” suggest something could go awry. Things don’t go awry for Sirius.
He pours himself a drink, because the werewolf is no longer interested in continuing the conversation and Sirius isn’t about to start hexing him while the man is reading the forsaken thing. It would be just cruel. And Sirius is cruel – no doubt about it – but somehow this is where he draws the line.
Ridiculous. He’s being ridiculous.
He finishes his glass of whiskey, pours himself another and without conscious thought fills up a second tumbler.
Because clearly this is the night he loses his damn mind, he decides not to second guess himself and give the spare drink to the werewolf.
And since they’re drinking together, it’s only right he calls him by his name. Otherwise, it’s just weird. He sits on the sofa next to Remus, the man’s toes so close to his thigh they’re almost touching.
“How long have you been a werewolf?” He asks because he’s bored and doesn’t thrive in silence – never has.
Remus puts a long finger onto the page, keeping his place. He drinks the whiskey, coughs at the burn. “Does it matter?”
“Suppose not,” Sirius doesn’t like the raised eyebrow nor the clear dismissal. “Just curious.”
“Tough sh*t,” is all the response he’s given, and Remus goes back to reading.
Fine. Remus doesn’t want to talk to him, he won’t talk. It’s not like he actually cares about the details. He’s just trying to pass the time quicker.
But Sirius was a spoiled child and now he’s a spoiled man, unfamiliar with not getting what he wants. He wants knowledge, the only commodity worth something to a man who can buy everything.
“Where is your accent from?”
“Wales.” Remus doesn’t even raise his head this time.
“Do you speak Welsh then?”
“Cer i grafu, asyn cyfoethog.”
Sirius empties his glass. The whiskey burns all the way down, almost as pleasant as the sound of the foreign words in a voice made of afternoon rain. He summons the bottle, gets himself a refill and tops up Remus, too.
“What does that mean?”
The look Remus levels him with makes Sirius feel small.
Unheard of.
“Is this a part of it?”
“Pardon me?”
“This. The book,” Remus shakes it, quite violently, in Sirius’ face. “Is it a precursor to torture? Part of your planto kill me? Did you give it to me just so I can’t enjoy reading it with your incessant yapping?”
Sirius stars, mouth agape, rendered utterly speechless.
“Because if so, then just get on with the rest of it would you? A bit low, defiling Wilde.”
“Sorry,” Sirius surprises himself, “no, sorry. Read. I’ll leave you be.”
Remus looks at him, doubtful, not a shred of warmth. He shouldn’t look like that. He’s sun-kissed, autumn-wild, and should be warm and soft.
The edge of him, the sharpness of words, how it juxtaposes with how he looks – Sirius feels chastised and his blood sings for it. The last person to make him feel this was his mother, and even then, it wasn’t like this.
It’s like giving Remus his last meal, Sirius explains to himself, can’t promise one and then spoil the taste.
He stays quiet and lets the man read.
***
Sirius thought Remus would stall, but soon he closes the book, puts it on his lap and folds his hands over it, primly. Eyes empty and still far away in the story.
“Right,” finally, Remus shakes himself out of the stupor and hands the book back to Sirius, “thank you for that.”
“What did you think about it?”
“The ending?”
Sirius tilts his head in agreement like a dog, waiting to hear more.
“I don’t know yet. Would have to spend some time thinking about it.”
Sirius barks out at the obviousness of the statement: “is that your way of asking me to let you go?”
It comes out like a sneer, the way he’d talk to any other person he decided to do away with, but he doesn’t like this voice of his aimed at Remus.
“And if it was? Would it do any good?”
“Sorry, but no.”
“Didn’t think so.”
They sit in silence but it’s not awkward, not empty. Sirius doesn’t feel the need to fill it. But there is something he’s curious about, something that itches at his brain, so he asks:
“Why aren’t you begging for your life?”
Remus looks at him, truly, really looks at him. From his ring-adorned fingers to the sheer black shirt, the hair Sirius has on good authority falls “artfully” onto his face. There is something there but not the usual things: there is no fear, no deference, no thinly masked hatred.
“Would it make a difference?”
“It would not.”
“Then what’s the point?” Remus shifts on the sofa, reclines further. His toes nudge Sirius, retreat. “It’s not like I didn’t know this would happen eventually. At least I’ll have something pretty to look at, at the end. And who knows. Maybe I’ll maul you first, when I’m transformed.”
Remus raises his glass to Sirius, then tips what’s left of his drink into his mouth, swallows, flinches slightly when the collar chafes him. More blood pours down his neck.
“You don’t like pain,” Sirius speaks without thinking.
“Who does?”
(Sirius doesn’t answer because he didn’t mean to ask in the first place, and this is not the kind of conversation he wants to be having.)
“There is enough of it in the hours before, and days after the full moon. I don’t invite more.”
“Not even when it’s sweet?” A common theme for the evening: Sirius’ mouth running without his permission.
And Remus looks. Gods, how he looks, the same way he looked at the book while he was reading, into the air once he finished it, deep in concentration. All that focus on Sirius, now. Scanning his face.
“Can you be sweet?”
Sirius’ stomach clenches. Hard. Thinks he might be blushing, wants to hide, wants to preen and bask in the attention Remus could maybe give him.
The attention Remus can’t and won’t. Wouldn’t, probably, even if he could. There is less then two hours and then he’ll be a beast, and then he won’t be anything at all.
Sirius stands up from the sofa. It’s time to get started. His mind is playing tricks on him – tomorrow, he’ll have a long lazy day, and, in the evening, he’ll go out and find someone to sequester into his bed.
“Get up.”
Remus must be able to feel the shift. He sighs and unfolds his limbs, stretching slowly. Once he’s up, Sirius banishes the sofa. He doesn’t want to ever look at it again.
The werewolf (because they’re not drinking anymore and Sirius is done being sentimental) stands tall, despite the pull of the chain. His face is blank now, like it hadn’t been yet. Sirius’ thoughts rebel against that and he pushes them as far back as he can, building walls around boxes.
He’s angry now. Because this should have been an easy, fun evening, and instead of getting on with things he let the werewolf read.
If Regulus could see him now, he’d have a field day. Then he’d throw a fit because he’s been promised ingredients for his potions, and Sirius is stalling.
Still stalling. His wand is in his hand, the spell scratches the back of his throat, and yet he can’t bloody say it. It’s so simple. He’s done it more times than he can remember. And yet, as he stands, as Remus (because who is he kidding, really?) stands in front of him, something proud in his spine, he can’t even consider saying it.
He starts off small. The anger will come. It always does.
“Diffindo,” the word is barely audible. Remus’ sweater splits on his arm, as does the skin underneath. It’s a small cut, in contrast with what’s coming.
Sirius uses the spell again, and again. Blood stains the floor but Remus is still standing, just as proud despite the redness beginning to line his eyes.
They stand close together. The sitting room is vast, and there is no need for it, but they’re only an arms’ length away.
The next spell hits Remus in the face. The cut is sharp, precise. Blood spills over, obscures freckles over the cheekbone.
There’s the anger.
Sirius raises his wand again, allows it to guide him, to use the spell he’s used countless times, the one his mother taught him to use on his brother when they were both still children. It has to be meant and gods, how he means it, so he readies himself and –
“Why aren’t you even trying to fight me back?”
Because soft light of the dying day falls through the windows, touches Remus’ face. Envelops him, renders the mess on his face into something holy. Something to behold. Sirius can’t – he just can’t.
They’re standing so close, within reach of the silver chain, and yet Remus doesn’t retaliate. Accepts each cut like it’s his due. Like it’s earned.
Sirius hates it.
With each moment Remus doesn’t respond, Sirius’ temper raises. “You’re just standing there, letting me cut you into pieces, why don’t you do something!”
Remus stays quiet but he sways, ever so slightly. The bleeding from his hand suddenly grows much heavier and before Sirius can react, Remus falls to the floor.
***
The sofa is returned to its previous position in the middle of the sitting room. Sirius levitates an unconscious Remus onto it, lays him down on the plush cushions. Banishes the mutilated sweater.
There are more cuts than he thought, and they’re not healing. Now that he means it, his magic doesn’t touch Remus anymore – the encroaching moon must be interfering with the body, Sirius guesses and tries to fight against it, spell after spell.
It’s not the blood loss that made Remus faint. It’s not pretty, the cuts littering him, but it’s not as bad as Sirius intended.
There is dittany paste in the Manor. Sirius fetches it and spreads it onto the cuts on Remus’ torso and arms. The skin he touches is warm like amber left out in the sun, but the man is thinner than expected. Protruding ribs and hipbones. Sharp edges of bone. Looks like he hasn’t had a hot meal in a long time.
He’s tending to the cut on the cheek when Remus’ eyes open.
“How many more times do you think I’ll wake up to this pretty face of yours?” Spoken softly and not at all like Sirius had just tortured him.
The pink-orange light of a sunset throws shadows against Remus’ face. The air changes in taste, grows thicker until Sirius feels it like a fist in his throat, ready to suffocate. He’s staring.
Instead of responding, Sirius reaches around Remus’ neck and removes the enchanted clasp of the collar, one charmed to respond only to his touch. The silver comes away bloodied and Remus whimpers when it’s removed. The skin underneath is blistered, burnt. Sirius puts the salve on it, then repeats with the cuffs around Remus’ wrists.
“What game are we playing now?”
Sirius doesn’t understand. “Game?”
“I assume it’s one. You’re being sweet.”
(There is that word again, one Sirius never before paid particular attention to: he doesn’t put sugar in his coffee, doesn’t indulge in chocolate. The way it comes out of Remus lips changes whatever Sirius thought he knew of the concept. It’s soft the way a cry can be, sharp like it’s laced with salt or glass.)
There is nothing hazy or unsure about Remus’ words. “Is this a part of it? Are you trying to trick me into feeling safe before the moon?”
It’s not. And Sirius loathes to admit it. But he loathes the thought of lying about it more – hates the idea of Remus feeling anything but safe.
“I’m not trying to trick you.”
He’s finished with the wrists. They smell like herbs, medicinal, clean. Remus’ ankles are worse and he stops before removing silver from there, knowing it will hurt and both hating the fact and craving it beyond measure, longing for that sound Remus makes, without pretence, a low hiss from the walls of his throat.
“What are you doing, then?”
Sirius stops because Remus’ hand stops him. Grabs his shoulder. It’s the first time he’s touched him, really and purposefully. The feeling is like learning Apparition. Like the first time Sirius had splinched himself.
Never before had he allowed the pain to be turned at him.
“If I told you I don’t know?” He’s honest - he’s honest most of the time but never does it require vulnerability like it does now.
Remus watches him – reads into him. Sirius is a skilled Occlumens but Remus doesn’t need to enter his mind to see whatever thoughts are written in there. They must be plain across his face, even if he doesn’t know what they are.
“No games, then,” Remus breaks, lies down more comfortably and throws a hand over his eyes.
In the silence, Sirius attends to his ankles. They are delicate, breakable. Sirius wants to kiss the skin where it weeps, lick up the blood, seal it with a kiss like a promise until it knots back together. Hopes it will leave a scar – a signature- a proof I was here. Like a child marking up his favourite toy.
“How long till the moon?”
“Just an hour.”
“You know this is pointless, what you’re doing? The wolf will tear it all up again as soon as I’m it.”
It’s true, of course, though Sirius didn’t think of it. “Does it make it feel better?”
“It does.”
“Then it’s not pointless.”
Sirius doesn’t think he’s ever made anyone feel better. Maybe Reggie, when they were kids. When their mother would lose her temper at a slight, real or perceived. Even then, not like this.
“Are you still going to kill me?”
That’s the question, isn’t it? That was the plan – he can call it a plan now that’s it’s falling apart so spectacularly, and all by his own doing. Remus didn’t fight him. He didn’t do anything but just be. And that was enough.
“There is old magic in the Black lineage, but it needs sacrifice,” Sirius explains, not lifting his eyes from where he spreads dittany into Remus’ skin. “I have everything else already, some things from muggles, some from me, and some from vampires. All there was left was werewolf blood and bone.”
Silence spreads with the last of the sunlight. Sirius takes deep breaths of it, and how it tastes like the herbs he’s using.
“My brother is a skilled potioneer. He likes to experiment. I get the ingredients, so he doesn’t have to. He’s young. Not – not young. But innocent, as much as he could have been.”
“You want to protect him.”
And isn’t that the crux of it, really?
“Yeah. Yes, I do.”
“And the magic?”
Nothing subtle about the probing, but Sirius can’t begrudge that, not when Remus was brought here to be killed for the sake of it.
“It will let me be strong enough to do what I haven’t been able to.”
“How wonderfully vague.”
Sirius could tell him. Wants to, even. He hasn’t told anyone else, not even Reggie, and it’s a lonely knowledge of what he’s aiming for. But he needs something in exchange.
“Why didn’t you fight?”
“I didn’t have my wand.”
It’s not an honest response, although probably not fully a lie. For the first time this evening, Sirius feels disappointed.
Remus seems to fall into himself, then return, and speaks again. “I’ve been looking for a way out for a while and you were handing it to me.”
Sirius stops rubbing the salve in, feeling frozen with the admission. Remus notices it, immediately, like they’ve known each other- like they know each other.
It’s a vulnerable thing, being known.
“It’s not… easy, being like this,” Remus gestures to his body lazily, up and down, like he’s talking about the mundane. Averts his eyes and covers them again. “I must disclose when applying for jobs, and muggles fire me after a few months – too much sick leave. Lost my flat last month, again. Unpaid bills. Looking for another job seems like an exercise in futility. I was just going to finish the book, and then… yeah.”
Sirius holds the bones of Remus’ ankles tight enough it will leave bruises. 50 pages, and they wouldn’t have met. 50 pages and they wouldn’t be here. 50 pages and the handlers would have scoured the werewolf registry and found some other poor soul, and Sirius would have tortured them to madness and killed them and succeeded in changing himself.
Instead, Remus.
“Being… this,” Remus continues, unaware of how each word is a weapon, “you know about the disappearances. They’re common enough. I’ve been expecting to end up as potion ingredients for a while now. The hide fetches good money, if it’s not cut up too badly. Or so I’ve heard, anyway.”
Remus opens his eyes and sits up and faces Sirius straight on, like the confession was nothing. “Which bone did you need?”
Sirius forces himself to loosen his fingers, runs them up Remus’ legs, up to the tibia. “This one.” Up to the knee, higher, to the femur, “and this one.”
Remus’ breaths out, a broken thing, and it’s even better than the sounds he made of pain.
“The magic. What was it for?”
Sirius’ fingers play on the material of Remus’ trousers, like they belong there and nowhere else. Feel the muscles, the tendons, a ridge of what must be thick scar tissue. “I was going to kill my mother,” he waits for a reaction (hate? Dismissal?) but it doesn’t come, so: “she’s not… good. She hurt Reggie. Hurt me, too, but she’s still my mother, so… the magic will make it so I no longer feel. So that I can mean it, when I cast the spell. So that it works.”
Remus laces their fingers together. It’s the most delicate touch Sirius ever felt. It’s not meant to hurt or subdue or otherwise affect. It’s just there. Maybe comforting, if Sirius had the frame of reference for such things.
“And now?”
“I don’t know.” It’s a strange feeling, the not knowing. Sirius’ life is a series of events precisely calculated and this was just one of them, the one he’d been working on for a better part of the year, ever since the last time he had to mend broken bones on Regulus’ fragile body.
“It’s a good thing you own a werewolf, then.”
“Pardon me?”
“Throw her to me, next moon.”
An offer. Said like it was nothing, like it wasn’t life changing and unpredicted and unprecedented. Remus is just as soft but something hardened in his eyes as he listened about Walburga and now he’s offered to rid Sirius of his worst nightmare.
Unaccustomed to giving thanks, he focuses on the other statement.
“I don’t want to own you.”
“Should have thought of that before you bought me,” Remus raises one eyebrow, almost mocking. “And you don’t own me. You wanted to buy a werewolf, so you own the werewolf. The monster. I’m a human. I can’t be owned.”
“But you’d kill her.”
“Yes.”
“For me. For me you’d kill my mother.”
A nod.
“Like you were going to kill yourself.”
Another.
Sirius crawls up Remus’ body, crowding him into the sofa, cradling his face, delicately, avoiding the cut on the cheek.
“If you belong to me,” he runs the pad of his thumb up and down the golden skin, “then you won’t think like that anymore. The life will be mine now. Yes?”
“If I belong to you,” Remus counters, “you won’t use the Black magic. You won’t do away with your emotions. You’ll stay as you are.”
“Yes,” Sirius agrees, then waits, and then:
“Yes.”
And Remus kisses him.
(Remus kisses first and it’s such a small distinction but, oh, so important here, on the sofa still stained red, in the sitting room of the Black Manor, amongst the walls which held his cries of pain. But he kisses first.)
Sirius is a cruel man. This, he knows. He’s done things he hides from his brother, things he’d hide from himself if he had a conscience. He doesn’t deserve this – a man, soft, underneath him, fingers in his hair and on his neck. Not this man. And yet.
Remus moves him away, changes their position, hand-on-sternum pushes him into the sofa and sits over him. Asks: “Will you be sweet for me?”
Sirius whines.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” a smile so predatory it could belong to the wolf already – but they have half an hour left and Sirius will use every moment of it until he’s ripped away or ripped apart.
Remus doesn’t need the moon to rip him apart. He does it with his mouth – on Sirius’ neck, collarbones – with his fingers – gripping and anchoring and holding down and Sirius has done this, so many times, but never like this before. It’s never been like this before.
“You didn’t have to go through all this if you wanted a pet werewolf to f*ck you,” Remus hums into his neck, “I’m registered. Could have just found me.”
“I wouldn’t have known how to ask for what you’ve given me.”
It must be the right answer, because Sirius is rewarded: hand, large, sure, gripping his hip and pushing him into the sofa, like a preview for what it’s going to be like, like a brand or a promise; it almost burns.
There is blood left at Remus’ collarbone and Sirius licks it like he wanted to before he knew what want was. The taste explodes in his mouth and the sound he makes is unholy.
“Keep this up and I’ll f*ck you through the sofa,” Remus growls and Sirius wonders, in what’s left of his mind, if it’s the moon making him like this or if he’s just lucked out hard.
He’d have them both, the soft Remus with a book and this Remus, with his knee in between Sirius’ legs, grinding it into his crotch.
“I won’t…” Sirius tries, tries again, “I can’t…”
And, hell of all hell, Remus stops. “Are you alright?” Because he misunderstood the sentiment so badly Sirius wants to eat him for it. Nudges him with a leg wrapped around Remus’ waist.
Fat load of good it does him, Remus stills him with a hand on his throat (and it spans so far across it just that is enough to make him dizzy with it). “Use your words.”
“I’m fine. Merlin, I’m perfect. Please don’t stop. I just… f*ck, Remus, I’m going to cum too fast if you keep doing this to me.”
A raised eyebrow, a hand that tightens just enough, just to test, and the knee pressing harder, harder, harder. “Doing this?”
“You’re going to kill me,” a whimper so shameful,
“No. You’re way too pretty for that. I’m going to keep you, just like this. Perfect little Lord Black. Wouldn’t you like that? A pet thing for your pet werewolf.”
Sirius doesn’t respond. He’s beyond that. Distantly aware Remus is talking him through it. The words don’t register but the voice is enough, the touch more than enough.
If he had a presence of mind, he might have been embarrassed about spilling all over himself, still in his trousers. But the feeling is too good (and he’s felt it before, but never like this), and when the surroundings return Remus looks at him with so much unbridled hunger, he can’t find it in himself to regret a second of what’s happened.
Remus grabs Sirius’ wand from the floor.
(And when did that happen?)
His other hand is still around Sirius’ throat. This could be his chance but Sirius isn’t afraid. If this is how he dies, if he was wrong about what this was… at least he got to have it, even if in the form of a lie.
Remus turns the wand, twirls it in his fingers, studies it the way he studied Sirius’ face, something uncompromising and searching.
“Very pretty. Just like its owner.”
And he waves the wand in a practiced motion.
A glowing image of a clock face appears.
“Two more minutes. You better go.”
All the points of contact between them dissolve. The knee, the hands.
“What happens now?” Sirius asks and for the first time, he’s unsure. Afraid.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On what happens in the morning.”
And Remus helps him up from the sofa, relinquishes the wand. Last kiss, one that feels both like a goodbye and like a supplication.
Sirius leaves. The moon rises.
***
Remus wakes up.
