Just Like That Chapter 1: First and Last, a harry potter fanfic

Love wasn't supposed to hurt this much.

Love was Lily Evans and fiery green eyes, love was James blathering on and on and on, love was curses and hexes but finally kisses.

But for Sirius Black, love was agony.

Love was teenagers fumbling in broom cupboards, casting silencing charms on bed hangings.

Love was lips and hair and teeth, love was dreams and wishes and hopes.

Love was James beaming, Lily blushing.

Love was Remus's wide, open eyes, half-covered with hair, his shy, happy smile, hand in hand with a girl.

Sometimes, Sirius felt that it wasn't love, it was punishment. Punishment for being born a Black, punishment for belonging to such a family and punishment for deserting it.

Sometimes it was more guilt than love. Sometimes it was nothing, and it scared him.

For Sirius, love was not a pleasant tingle, but a punch in the gut. Every time it was the same, not new but not dulled, not old and not numbed.

Lily just walked up, walked in. She waved hi, cheerfully, as if she hadn't spent the last six years causing his best mate constant heartache.

She walked in as if he had not a care in the world.

She walked in as if he was as happy as she was.

She tumbled into James's bed and forgot the silencing spell and it was nothing to Sirius.

Remus hardly ever brought her up to the dorm, but when he did, he never forgot the spell.

Sirius could be thankful, but it didn't feel through the dull, hot ache behind his ribcage, his stomach clenching painfully.

He thought maybe it was worse, in a way, that he couldn't hear them, because then he didn't know what was happening and his imagination was sometimes so much worse than reality.

But then he forgot it, that one time, that one night when James and Lily were in the Room of Requirement and Peter was asleep on top of his Potions essay and Remus walked in and just like that closed Peter's ink bottle and just like that went back to her, their lips meeting in a frenzy, and Sirius just like that felt his heart break a little more at the same time as he fell just a little bit more in love because only Remus could be so Remus and so not Remus at the same time, two seconds apart.

So Sirius stuffed his pillow over his head and curled up towards the wall. He glared at his motorcycle and his Muggle girl posters and saw nothing, felt nothing, except a disturbing amount of misery.

Sirius let himself cry, and apart from why he was crying, the crying itself made him cry even more and the fact that the crying made him cry more made him cry more and it just went on and on like that until he felt insane and was drowning in his own tears.

Sirius drowned in agony and self-pity and his own patheticness. Sirius drowned in water and in love, in tears and in salt and in blood. He drowned in his frantically beating heart, in his wishes for, for, for...

Sirius Black never ceased to be surprised at his heart's capacity for a certain werewolf with the name of Remus Lupin.

He let his cool grey eyes take in the scene from the common room window. He saw them together, he saw them apart. He saw them meld into one but still he looked, and still he saw.

They kissed and drew apart. He could almost make out the expressions on their faces, but he already knew Remus's, knew it by heart, almost literally. He knew the slight eagerness masked by calmness. He could see the overwhelming love and even more overwhelming paranoia. He knew the fear and the loneliness, the happiness and the hope, the innocence and naive hope.

Remus reached out and touched her face. Sirius could feel it on his own skin, almost as if he was there with him.

Remus stood. He staggered slightly, away from the girl who scrambled up, who reached out hesitantly.

He flinched away from her touch.

Sirius knew the expression on Remus's face because he felt it every day in himself.

The girl walked away, looking back, speeding up, head bowed. Sirius thought he saw tears.

He saw Remus fold back to the ground, always graceful, but with movements drugged with heartbreak.

The next time he saw him was at breakfast. Remus came to breakfast, with dark circles under his eyes and red rims, but acting normal, if a bit detached.

Sirius came to breakfast because that's what he always did. He came to breakfast because really, this morning was not like any other.

If he didn't think of Remus. Which had never really happened, so he didn't know why he would start now.

Sirius stared, because he'd never really thought anything could be worse than before, but seeing him feeling exactly like Sirius himself was just another blow, another weight, another layer.

When they both thought no one was looking, Sirius stared at Remus and Remus let his eyes close momentarily, let his breath out slowly or quickly, let his fists clench and his eyes flash and grow dull.

Sirius continued to be surprised.

He was surprised when he saw Remus's golden-auburn eyes hovering over him at half past one in the morning, a week later.

He was surprised when he crawled into his bed. Sirius scrambled up so he was leaning against the wall.

Sirius's heart jumped up the his throat as Remus brought his knees up to his chin, leaned closer to Sirius.

He wrapped his arms around the werewolf tightly, dangerously, but who was Sirius Black if not one to take risks?

He buried his face in Remus's hair, inhaled his scent, delicious and appealing, comforting, but scary.

Remus wasn't thinking about how Sirius's nose skimmed his ear, or how his heart was beating, beating, beating almost in one solid fast sound.

Remus wasn't thinking about whose arms were around him.

He wasn't thinking about anything but her.

Sirius was ready for pain.

He was ready for gut-wrenching agony.

He was ready for it.

But it didn't come. If it had, it wouldn't have been surprising, and it wouldn't have been Remus.

Instead, he felt again like he was drowning, but this time in love. Remus twisted into him and let him hold him and tried to stop his shoulders from shaking, tried to stop tears from leaking out of his eyes. And as he did this, Sirius felt an unbelievable tenderness, softness, almost like chocolate mousse in consistency.

Amid Remus's whispered God Sirius what did I do wrong and I thought, I thought, she said, she...I love her, Pads, I love her more than anything, and What the bloody hell am I supposed to do? Sirius just said, I know, I know, I know, and stroked the gold-brown-coppery hair under his fingers.

"Is this my fault, Pads?"

Quiet and soft, golden and worried. Almost as if he'd done something.

"No, Moony." Sirius smiled weakly. "Of course not."

"Then..."

"I don't know."

"Merlin. She said she didn't care. She said she loved me. She said..."

Sirius was silent.

"She said she didn't want to live with a werewolf."

Sirius wanted to do nothing more at that moment than to pull away and tell Remus that he would want nothing more than to live with a werewolf.

"Remus."

"She said it was too hard. She said she couldn't handle it. She said she didn't love me enough."

I love you more than enough. I love you enough to hold you and not say a word. I love you enough to do this. I love you so much.

"Sirius."

Sirius wrapped his hands around Remus's shoulders and wondered if it was that unhealthy to wish to be a certain girl so badly.

"I know, Moony, I know," he whispered. "Gods, I know."

Eighteen years later, grey eyes meet brown and Sirius's lips move and he's saying something, telling him something, and Remus is stepping back.

"What? No." His eyes are wide and light and Sirius feels like he can drown in them. He steps back, his eyes flickering from Buckbeak crouched in the corner to Sirius standing before him, as if contemplating which is worse.

"I'm sorry." Sirius's voice is a whisper.

"But. Why?"

Sirius glares at him.

"I mean. I mean, why now?"

"Now?" Sirius laughs, and Remus looks, not scared, not angry, but incredibly confused. "No, Moony, not now. Forever." He tries not to look at him, tries to stare at the ground instead of his hypnotizing eyes.

"What?"

"Moony." He chuckles, low and humorless.

"Sirius, stop." His fists clench, then unclench. His eyes narrow.

"Forever, Moony. Fifth year? I dunno. Fifth year's forever. Since...since Snape, I guess. I never really...guess I never thought. Except about you, really. You would have been proud, if it had been about anyone else. Well, 'cause then I would've told you, I s'pose, if it had been anyone else. So, yeah. Fifth year. January? I dunno. Maybe before. Maybe fourth? Annabelle, maybe, 'cause of her, you remember her? When I walked in on you. Snogging. Yeah. I don't know, Moony. Probably sometime in there. It could have been in Potions, or Transfiguration. It could have been at Hogsmeade. It could have been at night. I dunno."

Sirius is rambling and Remus is breathing, all wide eyes and no, no, no.

"No."

Sirius nods. "But really, Moony, I'm only telling you this because I know I'm dying soon anyway and I wanted you to know. You know. I don't want you to feel guilty or anything, or, or...you know, just for you to know. And, and Tonks is nice, really, a nice girl. I suppose I should be happy you're ending up with my...my...my cousin or...or whatever she is, to me. You know. And I really never wanted you to feel guilty, I was guilty enough for the both of us, you don't need that even if I hadn't been, and I'm glad you got the Wolfsbane because James and...and Peter and...I don't want to leave you, you know, to...to be alone, on full moons. But I have to admit it was awfully boring to lie on the carpet all night, or would have been, if you hadn't been there, because you're still you and I'm still me and I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry..."

Throughout this whole speech, or ramble, or mind-spew, or whatever it was, Sirius steps forwards, Remus doesn't move. His eyes hold inconceivable amounts of thought.

Sirius's mind spins.

"You're dying soon?" Is all Remus can say, his eyes ice and his eyes fire at the same time, and understanding is lurking but not showing, being frustrating denial.

Sirius just shrugs. "I can't stay here long, you know that, Moony. My mother is lurking around every corner, Kreacher is a walking reminder. I can't live here."

"What are you going to do?" Remus whispers.

"I'm going to help Harry," Sirius responds, with so much confidence and a smile, so that Remus felt almost as if they were seventeen again, with less to worry about and more ability to hide. "I'm going to help Harry and you're going to be the last thing I think about. Hopefully the last thing I'll see, but I'll understand if that doesn't work out."

He grins an easy, friendly grin.

Remus is speechless. "But."

"What?"

"Aren't you. I. Sirius."

"Yes?"

"I--sorry."

It's the best he can manage in this state of confusion and surprise, and it's so like Remus that Sirius's smile falters and is replaced by endless grey gorges.

Remus is thinking.

Remus is always thinking.

"Oh."

"I was just wondering," Sirius begins slowly.

"Yes?" Remus mumbles, distracted. But then his eyes snap up and despite what Sirius said he has the guilty, hunted look in his eyes. The look of completely unknowingly causing his very best friend endless pain. The looks of completely hating himself at that moment.

"I was just wondering," Sirius says again, and he suddenly feels like a teenager, regrets that he didn't do this when he was young and handsome and capable.

"If."

"If?"

"If maybe before, you know, before this battle we're going to have, before I--not to sound dramatic of anything--but, before I die--if I could maybe--if you could maybe, you know."

"What?"

"You know."

Remus took a breath. "No, no I don't."

"I know I'm no Tonks. Or, for that matter, a...you know. Woman. But. Just. Once?"

Remus sighs, smiles. "But you're Sirius."

"Is that a yes?"

"Of course."

Before Tonks can find him again.

Before Mad-Eye can hurry them all out of the house.

Before Dumbledore can confuse them all with cryptic words and twinkling eyes.

Before Remus realizes what's just happened, Sirius strides forward and in two steps is close enough. He leans forward, his hands run through Remus's soft brown-grey hair. Their lips meet, and Sirius thinks it's probably the best feeling in the world.

His lips are incredibly soft, so soft Sirius feels like he's sinking.

He tangles his fingers in the hair at the nape of Remus's neck.

He knows he's taking advantage of the endless generosity that is Remus Lupin, but he can't help himself thinking that maybe he deserves this tiny piece of heaven delivered in the middle of hell.

Remus is shaking, and his mouth parts, whether on purpose or not, Sirius doesn't know.

It takes everything he has to keep his hands in his hair.

It takes everything he has to stay where he is.

It takes everything he has not to scream.

It's worse, after, with the knowing but not having, knowing exactly what he's missing, knowing and feeling and wanting, so much. But there's not much longer. He's distracted by Harry, helping Harry, but he still feels Remus's presence at his side, one last time of adventuring together.

It's worse, with the endless hope and boundless imagination that Sirius can never really rid himself of. It's worse, now that he has a taste for it, a taste for what he'd wanted for so long.

Sirius tears his eyes away from his cousin, because he'd kill himself (if he wasn't already dying) if the last thing he sees is Bellatrix.

His eyes meet with Remus's wide brown ones, wide with disbelief and no, no, no, and he lets himself fall back into the curtain with a smile.