"See me tomorrow night?"
Remus looked up. Severus' eyes were back on their potion, and Remus glanced at their Potions Master, but he seemed occupied.
"Why not tonight?"
"Can't," Severus whispered furtively. "Black got me detention. Tomorrow?"
Remus' heart wrenched. He hated hiding his secret from Severus. He would tell him, though. Soon.
"Can't," he mumbled.
"Why?"
"Stuff." He concentrated on chopping the linden bark. Severus shot him a suspicious gaze, but shrugged.
"Fine."
After the moon, Remus promised himself.
Sirius' prank and the wolf landed Severus in the hospital wing that next night. Remus had left it too late.
Severus lay in bed, squeezing his eyes shut against the light that seemed determined to burn his eyeballs.
He couldn't sleep.
Remus, his love, his only. Remus had lied to him. Or, rather, he hadn't trusted him enough to tell him the secret that his friends, his stupid, bastard, Gryffindor friends so obviously knew about.
James had saved his life. James, whom Remus hadn't trusted enough to share the news of their relationship. James, who knew that Remus was--that--before Severus.
The betrayal burned and worried away at the pit of his stomach.
Severus cursed that he still lived.
Remus hesitated, trying to shake off the fear, the nerves, the pain and the humiliation. He approached the bed.
Severus was being held in the infirmary, Dumbledore told him. Indefinitely. He hadn't slept much, apparently, and he seemed a danger to himself. He wouldn't speak, he was warned, and Remus couldn't blame him.
He padded slowly to Severus' bedside. Severus was staring at the ceiling, his eyes flickering. Remus heard a fly buzzing above them.
"I'm sorry," he said. Severus ignored him.
"I can't believe Sirius did that to you," he tried. "I'm really really sorry."
Severus turned his back.
Severus lay on his back. His kidneys hurt: he hadn't been able to keep anything down, and the dehydration was getting to him. His eyes hurt: every time he closed them he saw the wolf. The one time he had managed to fall asleep he had dreamed so terribly that he had woken up and vomited on himself, the bile burning his throat.
He supposed that his worst mistake was the slip, uttering, "I want to die." He hadn't realised that his voice, raspy with screaming and fear and thirst, would echo so much.
Severus cursed that he still lived.
His eyes no longer hurt, they burned. Each time he blinked he saw it. Saw the wolf, coming for him. The wolf that was Remus. Remus.
The young matron, Pomfrey, had given him drops for his eyes. She told him, in an exasperatingly motherly voice for somebody only a few years older than he, that he should 'really sleep'.
He told her to fuck herself.
The fly on the roof, his only steady companion, had disappeared. He had tired of plotting its position on the roof, but it emphasised his loss.
One, negative four.
Severus cursed that he still lived.