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6/29/05 1:15 PM

It is there in that brief touch, fingertips with pads like satin, which Remus began to not understand.

" What's the matter, Moony?" Asked the canted head of Sirius, so tickling and teasing that Remus laughed nervously. There was no longer a body to it that resembled anything a body ought to. The satiny pads reached out again and Remus felt them.

Below them James was screaming. His voice ripped through the air with such precision and such an odd keenness that Remus remembered not to feel.

But the fingers that didn't belong to him were touching his bare arm too lightly to not realize and before he had a chance to react to anything at all, even the fluttery touch, Sirius made him scream like James.

His feet left the ground and his head tumbled down first because that was where his weight was stored. Never had there been so much thought in his head before, his temples were practically bulging with questions and the constant pressure of his sinuses were all because of Sirius.

By the time the water bit him, Remus heard Sirius scream. His scream was nice like a child amused but then crying all at once. Such a strange boy, that Sirius.

But Remus couldn't feel anything after the bite of the frigid water and so he continued downward. Curse that Sirius, he should have waited until I swam out of the way first, Remus thought. Remus thought a lot now but didn't think of why his arms weren't scooping rhythmically at the water or why it hurt to invite water into his lungs. His mind only consisted of why Sirius was being a damnable fool.

And then he was there, manifest by some miracle. His shaggy hair like a black and gothic halo around his familiar features.

That was when Remus closed his eyes. That was when his thoughts of Sirius changed to memories of Sirius.

" Padfoot, where are you?" said a voice of the prepubescent Remus who had always been loose but awkward. He felt in the darkness of their dorm, recovering from a nightmare, recovering from a divination gone awry.

" What's the matter, Moony?" said this Sirius with shorter hair and wider eyes and softer skin. Skin that Remus touched with his fingertips, reading, searching for familiarity in the horizontal features dusted by darkness.

And that was when Remus understood. That was when the fluttering touch made sense. They just wanted to see who the other was because it was growing dark and their eyes were useless in this type of black. But it was not dark the way they needed it to be to truly memorize the other. It was just black in their mind, a fog behind their eyes.

Remus felt nothing but those familiar fingers in the wash of water. The liquidity of his movements was much more fluid than water itself but only because Remus was biased.

The right hands were on the small of his back and the crook of his arm and they danced upward and Remus could feel Sirius' black halo tickle his face.

There was a female voice that Remus hadn't realized before and didn't want to realize now but the choice was already made.

Sirius placed his palm on Remus' chest lightly and turned his head just right and the water that coiled in his lungs found release through his coughing mouth and trickling nose. And with this explosion, Remus felt his body curl like a withered petal and spasm with joy.

Unembarrassed because he knew it was hidden, the secret that pushed onto his soggy shorts and the sweat he would have had pretended to be water on his brow.

It was strange to open his eyes to sunlight and Remus counted heads just to understand. How odd, he hadn't heard Lily scream, she must have not jumped.

That was Remus' first thought that didn't have anything to do with Sirius.