This is a prequel to another prompt, "Purple"
"Hey. Hey." A hand trailed over his shoulder. Laughter.
Someone is close to Sirius' ear, and he doesn't have to turn to know who it is. He looks at James sitting across from him, half-embarrassed. James, wankered, doesn't seem to really notice. Sirius snaps his fingers in front of James' face, ignoring, for the moment, the breath at his ear. "Oi." He waves his hand. "Oi, Prongs." Finally focusing, James looks blearily at him.
"S'rus I'mgonna doit. I'mgonna ask 'r."
"You're what?"
"I'mgonnask'er if sh-sh-l'ves me."
Sirius turns. Remus has wandered away; his stomach lurches, worried. It is strangely enlightening to be the soberest one out of them all, particularly on his best mate's birthday, even if it is only by a small margin. James is gesturing at Lily's back, where she (always the lady) is leaning on her friend's shoulder and laughing raucously, glass in hand. Sirius winces. "Prongs, no offence, but I don't think that's going to go very well."
James narrows his eyes, swaying where he sits, a bottle in his fist. He shakes it as he talks. "Y'- you d'nno, S'rs. You d'nno wha' she thinks. I'm gonna – ask 'r." He stands, weaving. Sirius stands to support him; alone, James can barely balance.
"Seriously, Prongs. Calm down. Sit down." He tries to put a hand on James' back, but the boy wildly shrugs him off. His glasses are askew.
"No. F'ck you. I'm goin'."
Sirius, torn between looking for Remus (who has disappeared) and preventing James from (once again) making a complete tit of himself, makes an important decision very fast. "Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you." He lets James go and the boy drops, too drunk to stand unaided. It doesn't look like he'll make it to Lily, lying on the floor, so that, at least, is one problem solved. Sirius pokes James with a toe to make sure he is still alive and once satisfied, turns towards their dormitory in the hope that Remus hasn't left the common room and gone wandering without supervision. He is just about to ask James' unconscious face if he has seen the werewolf when, miraculously, he appears.
"Sirius." An edge to his voice; a kind of laughter. He holds himself upright; better than James, but only barely. "What's James doing?"
"Not much, to be honest, Moons." Try as he might, it is almost impossible to talk to a person so clearly drunk without patronising them. Sirius might not be entirely there himself, but he, at least, is not tugging on his friend's forearms. Remus pulls with surprising strength, dragging Sirius onto the stairs that lead to the dormitory. Sirius laughs. "Alright, mate. Calm down. People will talk." He's joking but Remus is standing in front of him, very close very quickly, and breathing in the gap between them. Sirius laughs again, confused. "Moons?" Remus steps closer, presses his body against Sirius', looking at his face. He touches Sirius' arm and Sirius looks down at it, confused as to why it is there. He whispers, "What are you doing?" But Remus kisses him in the next second and suddenly he doesn't want to ask, anymore.
It's only brief – he wonders, madly, if this is Remus' first kiss, because it's almost grandmotherly (or it would be, were Remus his grandmother) before he pulls back and says "Is this okay?", and Sirius nods. In the space between the nod and the second after, he changes; he makes a noise that is halfway a grunt, halfway a sigh of frustration, and with his hand on Sirius' waist, presses them so close that Sirius hardly has any idea what to make of this at all.
He only realises his hands are dropped at his sides when Remus moves down and kisses the wide line of his throat and something runs through him, some kind of tremor; he puts one hand on Remus' arse and the other on his arm just because he doesn't know when this will happen again, if ever. Remus pulls back and looks at him.
"Pads," He breathes, looking at Sirius' mouth and not his eyes, "I'm really drunk." With sadness, ashamed, which is so like him. "Please don't tell anyone." He's whispering. Behind them, someone scrabbles at the archway, the entrance to the staircase, and they freeze together, pressed against the wall. Whoever it is moves on, though, and both breathe a sigh of relief.
"Don't tell anyone what?" He whispers back, breathing hard through his nose, trying not to make it obvious. Remus laughs.
"Come on. You know what I mean." He grins. This is a joke. Not a trick, per se, but something they can pass off as one in the morning. Something Remus can pretend never happened. And Sirius, ashamed of himself, given this chance, he takes it. He forces a laugh back.
"Yeah. Yeah, of course." And allows himself to be kissed again. Remus kisses him back for a minute or so, thumbing the edges of Sirius' jeans. He brings his knee up, between them, between Sirius' legs, and presses enough to make Sirius gasp and stutter against his lips, head tilted back for a second before his breathing comes back and they meet again, and again, and again. Sirius closes his eyes, hands wandering along the fractured landscapes of Remus' chest and back. He can count every tiny bone in his spine, can trace with his fingers, under the shirt, the puckered lines of scars made in his presence, and out. It's like a dream, like one he's had before. Except-
As quickly as it has begun, it ends. Remus pulls away and slumps forward on Sirius in a half-hearted hug, hands still straying along the line of his belt, lips moving against Sirius' collarbone when he talks.
"Sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm tired." He mutters. Sirius barely hears him. "You promise you won't tell anyone? Promise?" He says, like this is something Sirius has had no part in at all; like he's an unlucky sailor just caught in Remus' tide. In a different way, he supposes he is.
"Yeah. I promise."
"Really?"
"Really." Frustrated and angry at himself to the point of explosion, Sirius laughs to himself bitterly and pulls Remus off him. "You need to go to bed."
"I do." Remus agrees, with a quietness that somehow doesn't suit him at all. "Help me?" Sirius nods and lets Remus drape his arm over his shoulder, and helps him up the stairs. When they get into the dark dormitory, Remus steps away from him, and the heat leaves Sirius' shoulder in a wave, all at once. Stumbling, Remus pulls his shirt off and sits on the bed to tug at his trousers as Sirius stands in the doorway, hand to his own chest, over his lungs, embarrassedly watching. The werewolf glances up.
"Pads? You still there?"
"Yeah."
"'Night, Pads." Says his voice, in the dark.
"'Night." He says slowly back, unsure. He doesn't know if he's ready to go back to the party, or if he should stay here in this silent limbo he himself seems to have created. He shakes his head to try and clear it. Nothing helps. Tearing his eyes, finally, from where Remus is collapsing, folding to rest under his covers, he turns to the line of light coming from the door and goes downstairs, without so much as a look back.
XxX
"Hey. Do you have a minute?"
Remus looks up from his notes like he's been shot. Sirius isn't surprised; he didn't really know where the library was, let alone how to navigate its shelves and find Remus hiding here. Without the Map, he'd have been hopeless. Remus pulls a face over his initial shock. "I'm a bit busy, actually, Pads." He says absently, and Sirius nods, standing over his desk.
"Oh. Okay. Will I see you tonight?" These days, he feels a pain somewhere between his ribs sometimes, but it's not his heart, because it doesn't ever hurt your heart. Not there. Sometimes he thinks there is something else inside him, placed between his two lungs, that breathes a life of its own, that feels more deeply than he, himself, really can. Something blue and reverberating that, at times like this, tries desperately to break out and expose itself for what it is; a jellylike, pathetic thing. His real heart, not made of flesh and sinew but something much flimsier, instead. And he is ashamed, standing here next to Remus, begging for something in the quietest way he knows.
"Probably not. I've remedial potions, and Lily wanted help with her homework, and you know what she's like," He laughs half-heartedly. "Sorry mate, I know I haven't had much time for you lately." But he doesn't look sorry; he looks terrified. Just as terrified as he's been for the last two days since James' party; the same deer-in-the-headlights expression that would suit James far better. Sirius knows better than to push him. He's tried before.
"Okay. Sorry. I'll see you tomorrow, then?"
"Yeah, probably." A queasy smile. "I really am sorry."
"It's alright." Sirius turns and leaves the library, back the way he came. It doesn't matter; not really. He can't push and Remus won't let him, so they are stuck. Perhaps they'll never talk about it; perhaps that was all it was; a mistake. Something Sirius had waited for but that perhaps Remus hadn't. He feels, even in these early days, that to an extent he will just have to accept that the people you feel for don't always exactly feel for you. However much you want them to.
He turns out of the library and stands for a moment in a window-space in the corridor, just to breathe. He feels almost all of his expectation and hope flow out of him in one wave, leaving dregs of itself behind.
Watching at the window, tired, he sighs.