As We Say Our Long Goodbye, a harry potter fanfic

Disclaimer:

Remus and Sirius and Co. belong to Rowling. "First Five Times" belongs to Stars; "Undisclosed Desires" belongs to Muse. Every other work of fictional origin in this story belong to the author(s) they have been alluded to.

The wild imagining is all mine.

This was written for the 2009 Remus/Sirius Games (Team AU) over at the Remus/Sirius community on LJ.

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As We Say Our Long Goodbye

It can only be divine trickery, Remus Lupin thinks, that has him in this situation, back against the wall, the fibers of his borrowed black coat and trousers snagging on the trellis of roses and ivy as they climb, silently, into the night. The man next to him offers him the bottle of wine again, and gazes skywards unseeing, as if this, this insanity of stealing a drink with one's teacher outside while the world within hosts a formal gathering of the Dean and all men of political state and pomp, is of no particular import. He watches, surreptitiously, as Black, eldest son of the Ambassador of Magic, and heir to both worlds magic and mundane, reaches upwards to loosen his own tie from the confines of his collar, careless fingers undoing the top button, and then another, before they push through his dark hair, curling damply at his nape, at the base of that column of neck that is bared almost for taking.

Lupin looks away, swallows hard once, and takes another pull from the bottle, closing his eyes against the hoary fire of the stars, the sable pools of Black's formal shirt, silk, and whispering, accentuating the secrets that burn in his too silver eyes.

He makes to return the bottle, eyes still closed, fingers relaxed around the thin neck, the pad of his index brushing wet and warm against the sheen of condensation. A pause, and then there is a heavy weight over his hand, and when he does not jerk away, a lone thumb traces circular paths on the inside of his wrist, the wine between them forgotten. The touch is casual, oddly proprietary even, and almost contemplative, slow sweeps of thumb and the gentle scrape of a nail around his pulse, sounding out his heartbeat, delving beneath his skin.

"You should go back in. You will be missed."

His words are lazy, and he turns the bottle over languidly in his grasp, feeling drunk suddenly, as though the wine seeps under the calloused skin of his fingers and into his bloodstream. There is a low laugh, wry and almost mocking, and Lupin opens his eyes to find a grey gaze on his face, bright, impossibly, in the dimness of the night.

He lifts his arm, a careful movement, and Black's wandering fingers slide off. He brings the bottle of the wine to his mouth - an efficient snap of his wrist and pretending he does not still feel teasing warmth along its length – and waits till his lips are stained puce and grape kissed, before he speaks again.

"The party is thrown in your honor, after all."

Black laughs again, but this time Lupin hears the derision clearly, and chooses to ignore it. Black is still staring at him, his gaze at once insolent and gentle, and Lupin thinks of the first weeks of his class, against the indigo palette of dusk and oncoming night, timing his own breaths in an effort to not react to those unblinking grey eyes from the back of the room, serious and silent and heavy, even as its owner slouches low and comfortable in his seat, black jeans tucked messily into dragon hide biker boots – a careless, defiant even, indication of status and nature.

As though anyone could ever doubt that Black is indeed birthed with magic, for magic, with that proud certainty in the tilt of his jaw, with the assurance that he wears easy between his shoulders, like a cloak bearing the unmistakable mark of aristocracy. News of the Blacks' return to England had been duly accompanied by rife speculation, weeks before the family, one of the last deeply magical houses, had even set their own plans into motion.

In Hecademus University, the talk began as carefully worded rumors, small stones skipping quietly across placid surfaces, before it gained body, and voice, dredging the depths for evidence as insubstantial and cheeky as marsh lanterns. Lupin, tasked with more demanding teaching assignments in the new school year as part of his postgraduate scholarship, had paid scarce attention to the whispers, and then the shouts, of the elder Black's enrollment into the university. If the girls laughed with greater mirth or shrieked with increasingly careless giddiness as he passed them in the corridors and along pathways, he did not notice. He paid no mind either to the fiercer scowls that the local boys soon took to wearing, young men born and raised in families of magical lineage that are now, after three generations of intermarriages, lost in the science and blood of biological normalcy.

But everything - including this sticky night of warm wine and liquid fire, coiled low in stomachs and in the hooded shadows of unspeaking gazes, has its beginnings in the winter of 1934 - even if Remus Lupin is not a man inclined to linearity when it concerns scholarship, even if he finds nothing to celebrate in magic.

In that winter 75 years past, the world had watched in stunned silence as England's other half - her doppelganger sister with dark hair and even darker eyes, with energy cackling between her fingers and in the air that whirls around her, tamely and at her behest – stepped out of England's long shadow and into her own right. Magic, and by its free admission, another world, another England deep within England's secret heart, had emerged, proud and hesitant, defiant and conciliatory.

It would take another 3 years and 5 months, and two men, one too wise to wage internal war against an enemy that shares his face and his land, and another too wise to wage any war at all, before the two Englands are married, sisters bled into union for a future yet unwritten. All over England, and in the art cities of Venice and Rome and Athens, painters and sculptors paid awed tribute to the image of two women – Golden England, with a necklace of white-yellow daises and her full skirt, caught eternally in tableau with a laugh on her rose-bud lips, hand in hand with her sister, Magical England, smiling but not quite, black hair weaved through with wild flowers, an unblinking raven on her shoulder who silently watches the world that watches it.

Arthur Chamberlain and Albus Dumbledore, two men as different as the mistresses of their respective Englands, thus go down in History as the mediators of peace, even if Dumbledore would see another century yet, amassing magical forces in the immediate decade to fight side-by-side with Winston Churchill, Chamberlain's fearless successor, in the second dawning of mortal – and magical – strife.

After that second war, fought with artillery and spellwork, military strategy and fey enchantment, magic becomes a second skin under Golden England's layer of calloused and broken flesh, and that adage of blood running deepest of all is proven correct. In the immediate aftermath of war, in the ring of silence too absolute after the thunder and booming of bombs, England begins rebuilding for a collective future.

Schools offering both magical and vernacular scholarship take root, and water their young saplings into bloom, bringing together two worlds with the love of knowledge, and the promise of shared reign. Witches take mortal men to their beds, in love, perhaps, with the image of that golden hued and cheeked England, while their lovers burnt with an ardor for the image of her darkly beautiful sister. Children are born into unions; boys who run after balls, and boys who fly after a similar but different set; girls who fight with fists and nails, and girls who fight with carefully chosen words, lethal in their speaking. The government inducts magical representatives into its cabinet, and together, they uphold the noble tradition of political offices, and lie as one to their public. Soon, elsewhere in the world and all over, magical communities announce their presence, if they haven't already during that tumult of blood and nationalistic pride, and the world is changed forever.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The position of Ambassador, of magic and of ordinary reality, is one that is created by Albus Dumbledore, joint-Prime Minister. Its functions are clear enough, to safekeep civil peace, the fragility of which is perhaps recognized and appreciated only by Dumbledore. The responsibility and honor of the position fell primarily to the Black family, with its inherited magical nobility that can be traced back three generations and beyond. Together with the Potters, the Prewetts, the Weasleys and the Flints, Phineas Nigellus helmed the not-so-secret foundation of the magical community, and more out of duty than goodwill, bound his future sons to the task of peacekeeping. There are some who murmur, but not loudly, because of the considerable clout wielded by an ancient line as fiercely powerful as the Blacks, that this is Dumbledore's wisest policy – taming the wild flames of a sleeping dragon even before it can think to wake.

Orion Black - four generations removed - the son of Arcturus Black, the son of Sirius II, and the son of Phineas Nigellus - is the current head of the Magic Embassy, and in him, Dumbledore has a fickle ally, tied to the cause by no more than the gossamer threads of history and heritage. For the world, as it had in 1934, is now caught breathless in the throes of change. An opposition party has been rising quickly through the government, headed by a man with charm to cut and deep magic to protect, a man whose initiatives border terrifyingly on blood purity.

It is in this summer of 2009, against the backdrop of whispered anxieties and blood fanaticism, and in the mercy of weather that is mercurial and playful, a sprite and a changeling both, too hot in the day and too cool in twilight, that Remus Lupin, postgraduate student and teaching assistant, first meets Sirius Black, fifth in the generation to inherit, and thinking already, always, of bolting.

Their first meeting is more of a collision than anything else – the second is much the same, not as violent but no less unexpected, and that, in itself, decides the fervor that would characterize their relationship.

Things first come to a head three days after Black arrives on the campus. In those three days, Lupin only catches a fleeting glimpse of the much anticipated figure, and it is a glimpse that is at once attractive and forgettable, lingering no longer in Lupin's head as soon as the moment passes.

Black is tall, his bearing regal even when seen from a distance, dark hair rakish and brushing the collar of his shirt, falling artfully into his eyes – good-looking, definitely, and not just by any careless estimate. Lupin had been in the dining hall, nursing both a book and a lukewarm curry dinner, and in the first moment that he had been distracted, he had looked up, out the window, his gaze settling on Black. The other man had been outside, in the courtyard, shrugging off his book bag as he leaned forward, arm braced against a bench, to retie the laces on his boots. After a few seconds, Lupin had realized that Black's movements are punctuated by giggles and breathless whispers, and had followed the sounds like auditory breadcrumbs to a group of girls near the window, their noses nearly flush against the glass.

Amused, he had marked the place in his book with a thumb, had to look down to hide a smile when the girls begin to exult over the curve of Black's jeans-clad left ass cheek, and then, almost as an afterthought, had lifted his head again to check if they are right. The entire dining hall had watched as a figure emerged from the crowd to jostle Black, hard, against the shoulder, had watched as Black stumbled forward briefly before snapping around, his movements startlingly fluid. A hush had fallen over even Black's fangirls in the heartbeat that it had taken Black to turn around, but the bubble of silence had burst nearly as forcefully as the guarded sharpness in Black's gaze mere seconds later. For Black had grinned, wide and predatory, before lunging forward to grab his somewhat-assailant in a fierce hug, and the dining hall had immediately erupted in tumultuous discussion, and some barely smothered shrieks.

Lupin would later find out, from snatches of conversations that he catches in his many classes, that the other man is James Potter, a senior only two years younger than himself. Somehow, the rumors of the long-established bond between Potter and Black do not surprise Lupin, for Potter is not only the heir apparent to his family name and title, but Bled to the Old Magic.

In a world as evenly mixed as their England, the possibility of magical children has worn thinner and thinner with each successive generation and inter-marriage. It is an irony that has not escaped Lupin – the rarity, and conspicuous absence, of strong magic in a society that openly accepts it. The noble families have retained their hold on power not because of their wealth and good name, but because of their endured ability to produce magical offspring. There has always been talk of James Potter's Bled nature, even amongst the professors, for a child thus bonded is a magical, even if desired, anomaly. Professor McGonagall, the division head of the Psychology and Transfiguration department, is the only blood Bled person Lupin knows personally – not even Albus Dumbledore, in all the glory of his power, is tied so to the Old Magic.

The rumor of Potter's blood bond is one that only few people can confirm, and amongst them is Lily Evans, the Dean's daughter, and Potter's fiancée. Lily is as close to a friend as Lupin, in all his sedentary preoccupations, would admit to, and as such, he is friendly with Potter, and finds the man as charming and as able as his cult following makes him out to be.

But no, this quick glance across the dining hall and into the courtyard on a frantic Monday evening is not to be Lupin's first encounter with Black. That would take place three days later, on a Thursday, ironically in the courtyard once again, but in the unbearable heat of noon.

It would have taken an admirable force of concentration, and oblivion, to have overlooked Black that afternoon. Lupin had been early for his next class, a tutorial that would begin only an hour later, and his progress along the pathways had been slow, his usual urgency coaxed out of him by the too-persuasive afternoon blaze. When the human traffic ahead of him stilled to a complete halt, it had taken a few distracted seconds, and a stubbed toe, before he is made aware of the fact. The murmurs in the courtyard had swelled rapidly into blistering shouts – gruff voices that had reverberated in the air and promised violence. Lupin only had time to identify Black in that semi circle of four seniors – to make out a casually tossed insult of magic and arrogance and boys too damn pretty for their own good – to have his gut clench at the filthy leer that had accompanied the words – before Black had smiled, friendly and frankly terrifying, and had thrown his elbow out in a backhand that had brooked no further discussion.

All hell had broken loose then, and Lupin, in a moment of complete insanity, had paused to marvel at the sheer guts of Black, before he had pushed resignedly to the front. The crowd had not dispersed, if anything, it had doubled, the hum of testosterone seemingly too heady to resist, and there had been whispers in the air – the buzz of excitement, of anticipation, of wanting to see Black's display of magic. Black's eyes had been burning when Lupin got to him, pale licks of grey-like-white-silver flames, and it had been a fey sight, and one that Lupin had not known what to do with. Black had stared at him, no flinch of fear in those eyes even with his impossible odds, and Lupin, who had intended to break up the fight, found himself reaching upwards to block a blow intended for the other man.

It would take a few more punches, and a cuff that had glanced his neck and landed heavy and throbbing on his right shoulder, before Lupin would remember his original agenda. He had clutched Black then, locking an arm around his chest, and had shouted for the other four – two now, really, after all the damage Black seemed to have gotten in – to back the hell down. It could have been the angry authority in his words, or the fact that they had recognized him, but the fight had broken up, at least for a few seconds. In his arms, Black had even stopped struggling, but the heat that had scorched Lupin's chest where they stood, flush against one another, had only flamed hotter. Black had twisted around to study him, and those eyes – too pale, much too pale in this frantic fury – had caused Lupin's ragged breath to catch painfully in his throat.

He had caught a quick movement from the corner of his eye then, had barely time nor room to choke a breath before their attackers are on them again. Black had shrugged free of him, had pushed him away in the next moment, angling his own body imperceptibly to act as a shield, and Lupin had watched, his body in a thrall not of his own creation as Black took a blow to his jaw, too slow to turn from protector back to aggressor. The well of blood had been immediate, crimson and slightly mournful, for the corner of Black's lower lip had been split messily where the punch had caught him unguarded. Black had touched two fingers to the angry welt, had flicked his tongue out to catch the blood, and all Lupin had been able to do was watch, his body uncooperative, his trapped magic wild under his skin, as heat assailed him in a surge.

Things would have ended considerably worse, both for his uncharacteristic stupor and Black's quickening rage, had James Potter not shown up then, Lily hot on his heels, wielding her authority with an efficiency that Lupin can only hope to admire. While Lily set to break up their captive audience, Potter had stared down Black's welcoming party, a warning hand curled over Black's shoulder, dousing the fires in his sable glower. Lupin had watched, more fascinated than was comforting, as Black's fingers slowly unclenched at his side, as his face closed over, a sleight of hand, so quick and covert that Lupin had to look away, his own throat dry. He had made his way over to Potter then, had silently lent his professional position to imbue Potter's unsmiling warnings with credibility, even as he felt eyes on his back, even as he had imagined he could taste Black's surprise on his tongue – heavy, and coppery, exactly like blood, and he is left to wonder – whose?

When the situation had been resolved, mere minutes later, Lily had turned on Black in a huff that had made unmistakable their easy familiarity.

"Why the hell did you not defend yourself with magic?"

Black had grinned, and it had been a disconcerting sight, with blood still fresh on his lip, and with his knuckles raw and bruised when he raised a hand to secure his hair in a halfhearted tail.

"And give them the satisfaction? I think not, Lils."

Potter had laughed then, a ring of delighted mirth, and in that moment, Lupin had understood the nature and depth of the bond between the two young nobles. He had not the time to linger on his observation, however, for Black had turned his unblinking attention on him in the next second, without the grace or politeness of a warning.

"Are you going to write me up, Professor?"

Black's question had been genuinely curious, but there had been an unreadable expression in his eyes, now hued a dark indigo in his apparent good humor, and Lupin had to look away, unable to shake the feeling that Black had been looking at a part of himself he personally did not yet want to see.

"You did not initiate the fight, so it would hardly be fair if I did, wouldn't it? Also, I am not a professor."

His response had been light, his gaze careless over the scene before him, but careful to avoid the other man. Black's only reaction had been to laugh, quietly, and at the sound, the magic in Lupin's veins had sung, and for a few seconds, it had truly frightened him. He had made his excuses to leave shortly afterwards, had allowed Lily to briefly embrace him before he had all but fled, still tasting blood on his tongue.

That night, he had thrown himself into planning for his lesson the next day – a seminar on reading and literature, the syllabus left to his discretion and whim, and one of the very few classes that he had truly enjoyed teaching. He had chased words over pages, liquid ink over blank parchments, such that his magic had not been able to chase him through his sleepless night. He had heard his blood that night, and it had taken caffeine, and then alcohol, to drown out the call of the Old Magic, and to retain control over himself.

There are children like James Potter and Sirius Black, born with magic strong enough that it offers to Bleed them to the old ways, whispering secrets of the earth into their ears when they change willingly into animal forms, agents for and agencies of magic. But then there are also children like Remus Lupin, whose magic is not a song but a wild shriek in his ears, binding him so completely that his human skin is at odds with the fey blood that runs hot and true through his veins, that longs to free his coat of wolf fur to run the earth. It has taken him the best part of his youth, and all of his childhood, to master himself, and to trap his recalcitrant magic, and the wolf of its making, deep within his secret heart.

No, magic has not been a kind friend to Remus Lupin, but it has been years since he had last struggled with its stubborn burn.

At four into the new morning, his wolf had finally tired, and as it curled, resentfully, into the hollow against his spine, Lupin had still been thinking of grey eyes, and invisibility, and smiling lips smeared with the incarnadine of blood.

On that Thursday night, Lupin had decided to steer clear of Black – frankly, to ignore him altogether – this man who he knows is trouble, who his magic, in defiance, wants with a single-mindedness that would have him lose himself completely.

Naturally, he had stepped into class on Friday evening to find Black seated at the back, a gracefully arched eyebrow the only indication of his own surprise.

That first week, they work on Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, a novel popularly categorized as science fiction, and one that Lupin would struggle to undefine, to unname, to protect. The sun had all but disappeared from the skies by the time Lupin had begun his lecture, and the world outside the classroom is washed in the indigo of waiting twilight, the moon still barely visible as she readies for the hunt. The purple pours into the small class, through floor-length glass windows, and every week, Lupin would lose words to the beauty of the color, would lose students to the contemplation of drowning in indigo. Black's eyes, already sable in the sun, take on a glittering shade of grey in those evenings, flashing perse with every turn of the lamplight. After four weeks, Lupin had begun to think of his Friday evenings as evenings spent in indigo, spent chasing thoughts and that one man that he apparently isn't wise enough to not be attracted to.

That first week, they read Le Guin, and Lupin had jumped immediately into the text, sparing no mercy for the students who have been tardy, who have expected the first lesson to comprise of tedious and aimless introductions. He had allowed himself to share small conspirational smiles with the English seniors, who have sat through enough of his tutorials to know his volatile intellectual inclinations, and who have duly come prepared for classes.

He had spoken of Le Guin's setting of a world, a planet removed in time and space, without gender, and the social freedoms that would stem from this ideological ambivalence. He had spoken words of equality, of the mutability of kemmering, of being able to take mates freely and without mind of social conventions, into a silence that had only been broken by the scratch of pens against parchments.

He had been surprised – and yet, not really – when a voice had sounded from the back of the class, pitch and cadence even, and frustratingly charming. Black had wanted to discuss Genly Ai and Estraven – the two protagonists, one a gendered male from Earthian worlds, and the other a citizen of Planet Winter, unmarked and ungendered. His words had been slow, uninflected even, as he spoke of the homoeroticism between both characters, of Estraven's decidedly masculine characterization despite being agender, and the frustration of fulfillment between the two.

Lupin had wanted to smile, his heart irrationally quickening a beat at this discovery of how deeply Black read, that Black had read at all, and it had taken all his self-control to keep the note of pleasure from his voice. Black and him had exchanged ideas back and forth, first careless and curious, and then more heated, the small curl to Black's lips meant only for his eyes.

Lupin had read freedom in Le Guin, Black had read otherwise – the continued, if absent, patrolling by conventions, that persists to privilege heterosexuality, that explicitly allows only kemmered males to mate with kemmered females, even if they be one and the same all the other times of the year. The class had been slowly drawn into the debate, with those who have yet to read their texts flipping wildly and guiltily through the pages. It had not taken long for Lupin to notice the vast number of students agreeing with Black, each looking more besotted than the last, and when class had ended, more than two hours later, he had watched as Black fielded jokes and remarks, his charm generous and disarming.

Black had looked up, had caught Lupin's eye as the other man is leaving, and there had been that look in his eye again, that quiet burn of contemplation that had sat ill with his outwardly exuberance and cheer.

That first week, Lupin had realized just how dangerous Black is, and just how easy it would be to lose his head in indigo skylight, and in indigo eyes.

Two weeks later, they move on to Vladimir Nabokov, and Lupin had invited his class to think of the love story as a literary form, had invited Black to surprise him once again. It is in that week that Lupin realizes that Black is abysmal at failing expectations, and excellent at all other pursuits he deigns to undertake – a discovery that had bothered him more than it should have, and pulled the ground from his feet as he relearnt the magic and the calluses that define Black as a person.

Inevitably, and appropriately enough, their discussion of Spring in Fialta, the story of two lovers who love each other torridly but never in mutual possession, take them to the theme of Death.

What is Death, Lupin had asked, in a love story?

What is love, if it is unable to transcend Death?

Black had smiled, and this time Lupin had felt it in his magic rather than seen it in the silvery blue light of the room, and had asked, in return, what should love be if it transcends Death? A true love story, Black had argued – laughter thin in his voice that had seemed to be saying something else, that had willed Lupin to listen, and to hear – is one that cannot survive Death. One only loves as fiercely when he knows it is futile, that it is doomed to die with Death, for in that is the making of passion. Lupin had smiled his pleasant smile, for the class, and had ended lesson on that note.

It did not take long before Lupin had recognized Black for who he is – a wanderer, a refugee in every country that his father had played Ambassador to, a man with a past but without a home. He had watched as Black watched him, their gazes becoming bolder with each passing week, raking glances that focus too long on the face, that linger on lips, that travel the body, hungry intent made clear. Every Friday evening, he had wondered who Black sees when he looks at him, had wondered if it is just the velvet purple skylight that has him feeling as though he wants to be the first home that Black, with his sharp cynicism and his readerly ways and his ability to disappear, returns to.

Their courtship is ungainly, to say the least, having begun in bloodshed, and then persisted through the push-and-pull of authority, the invitation into minds and thoughts.

Four weeks into the semester, Lupin, and all the other teaching staff, is informed of the dinner that would take place on campus a week later to celebrate Ambassador Black's return to England, but he had barely time to be reminded of the disparity in status between himself and Black before his decision to cast caution to the wind is made for him forever.

After class that week – and they are now on poetry – Black had brushed by him to leave the room, and he had leaned in close, his breath hot on Lupin's neck as he pressed his gift into surprised hands, their fingers twining momentarily, feeling impossibly like the real gift instead.

It had been a music device, a MP3 player, and when Lupin had hit play, it had contained only one song, and one story to tell.

The first time, in your backyard
Underneath the plastic sheeting
Outside, it was pouring
And we were drunk as shit

Next time, at a party
When all our friends were there
There's nothing like their mattresses
Underneath the stair

[…]

Fifth time in your bedroom
And finally, we rested
And you leaned upon your elbow
And began to speak to me

But you stopped yourself and kissed me
And I grabbed your lips and told you
I know, I know, I know
I feel the same as you

Poetry indeed, and he had not wanted to laugh, had understood that the him four weeks ago would not have found the song either funny or witty, but he had leaned back against the bench in that courtyard, the wind whispering through his hair, and he had laughed, and his magic had hummed its approval.

He would see Black the next day, would deliberately accept Lily's longstanding invitation to lunch just to run into Potter and Black, and the smile – a slow, lazy grin of pleasure, of promising pleasure – that had stretched across Black's face had vindicated his foolish subterfuge. He had returned Black's gift just before he had left, his face studiously blank, even as Black had turned those eyes on him, pale grey pools of storm water.

He had known what Black would find when he later plugs in the MP3, leaning against the purr of his bike, too impatient to make the trip back home before receiving his answer. A story of his own to tell, a piece of poetry to match that gift of words and intent he had been given, and an invitation to fall.

You trick your lovers
That you're wicked and divine
You may be a sinner
But your innocence is mine

Please me -
show me how it's done
Tease me -
you are the one

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty's not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

He had not been surprised – not truly – when he had returned to his offices late that evening to find a post-it note stuck to the door, with only the words,

But I am divine, although I think – I want – you to find this out on your own.

After four weeks in class, Lupin reads between the lines with ease, having been taught to do what he often teaches others instead, and it had been a yes – a yes to falling, and messily, and into the indigo of those Friday evenings, and for himself, into the indigo of eyes like still water, deep enough to drown in.

[Redux]

He doesn't notice that their bottle is empty until he tips mere air and silence down his throat, and then he sighs, and levitates it clean across the garden and quietly into the waiting trash can. Black's gaze is hot on his skin, like it had been the day of their first meeting, and he swallows against the gooseflesh it raises, and offers his admirer, tilting his head just slightly, a twist of his lips.

Black laughs, a soft sound that is intimate in their shared breathing space, and Lupin's breath hitches, and suddenly, he cannot care a damn that the other man should see the tremor in his frame, should know the hold he has over him.

He is not kept long in waiting, because Black reads his unspoken invitation as surely as he has read all the texts prescribed for his classes, frustrating Lupin with his insight and his evasiveness week after week, offering nothing and taking everything. Black backs him slowly against the wall, hands on both sides of his head, and when he has him trapped – from the very beginning, Lupin thinks distractedly – he leans forward to murmur, his words catching on every shallow breath that Lupin inhales.

"Should I go back in then, Professor?"

Black tangles a hand in his hair, fingers curling around brown hair damp in the night's humidity, gentle in a manner that invites Lupin to lean into his palm.

"I've told you, I am not a professor, least of all yours."

Black laughs, and his thumb ghosts across Lupin's lips, aimless but sure, the path of heat that they trace tightening the coils low in Lupin's stomach. He inclines his head to study Lupin silently, his thumb mapping the dry ridges, and heavy on the tender skin that Lupin has chewed down to the quick.

"Remus then," he finally offers, "Remus."

There is nothing else to say after that, because Lupin – Remus – groans, and curls an arm around Black's neck, tugging him forward till they are kissing, the press of lips and tongues, and Remus opens his mouth in a breath, and allows Black entry, closing his eyes against the wet heat and the wanting.

When they pull away, leaning forehead-to-forehead, neither of them is smiling, and all Remus can think to say is – No, no, don't go back in.

Black kisses him again, and Remus locks his arms around his shoulders, and decides the singing magic under his skin had been right all along, that he would never want to let go.

Black's lips shift downwards, sucking a path along his jaw, and in between kisses, he asks, words muffled against sinew and skin, and hoarse, so hoarse – say my name.

Sirius – Sirius – and nothing more can be said, because Remus thinks there are tears in his eyes, and the wolf in his heart is baying, and he is kissing back like his life depends on it – and maybe it really does.

The End