A/N: Written because I couldn't resist the lure of 'Lying Low at Lupin's' any longer. A rather languid, sleepy sort of fic. Enjoy :)
Disclaimer: Remus and Sirius are the property of the wonderful J. K. Rowling.
Poetry in Motion
"Just after I walked out I don't think there was anything I was afraid of," Sirius stretched, arching his wiry arm into the dusk of the space above his tangled hair. "I felt like that on the way to you. Despite everything, I was afraid of nothing at all."
Remus regarded him critically, tired golden eyes panning over the bald planes of his skeletal face. It was exactly the sort of arrogant, post sex, highfalutin statement typical of the boy he'd romped through the Forbidden forest with; of the boy he'd fallen in love with. It was a comment dropped without a parachute, and designed to be netted. Remus was almost tempted to say 'Bollocks' and fall into the old trap, but he didn't.
"At that age I was afraid of almost everything," he said mildly, instead.
"But you weren't, were you, Rem," Sirius insisted, spanning the space between them to smooth a drooping lock away from the werewolf's tired face. "None of us were. We thought we were invincible," he laughed, languid yet genuine. "We probably were."
"And now?" Remus caught Sirius' hand before he withdrew it back across the fluff and dust of the old cottage's floor, his mind flickering to the blackness that surrounded them, the safe house that plumed the deepest depths of unplottable; the single, swiftly discarded mattress, the battered cardigan he now wished, lying there in the cold, he'd placed a little more strategically in the heat and the mess of their arrival. "Now we're here, in the epicentre of nowhere, lying naked on the boards, what are we now?"
Sirius rolled over and stared into the shadows that cloaked the heavy oak beams that crisscrossed the low ceiling. "I don't know," he smiled thoughtfully. "Perhaps we're human."
Remus sighed and crawled across the floor to his side, resting his weary head on the hard bones of Sirius' chest. Through his almost translucent skin, Remus could feel the thud of his heart.
"If this is what it takes," he murmured, "To become human, I would rather we had remained invincible."
Sirius laughed and kissed the greying hair of Remus' crown. "No," he said, "No only the young and naive remain invincible. Everyone else is left to become nothing but flesh and bone."
"You're poetic tonight."
"Well I've realised," Sirius murmured, lifting his hand and inspecting the tendons, thrown into sharp relief by the moonlight, "That in the midst of all my fury and obsession, I missed the crucial thing."
Remus lifted his head and smiled. "Very like you," he said, dryly, "You always see everything but the elephant in the room."
"You always were an insufferable know it all," Sirius smirked. "What did I miss?"
Remus shrugged, and settled back down, failing to catch a yawn. It had been a hard day. "You forgot you were alive," he murmured. "I know because I was the same. I assumed my life had ended thirteen years ago. I was an idiot."
"But neither of us could conceivably have known it was going to end up like this," Sirius chuckled gruffly.
Remus laughed, "No, admittedly I didn't spend much time daydreaming about months spent in far flung places in the company of the most wanted man in the magical world, Sirius."
"Sounds good that," Sirius smirked grimly. "The Most Wanted Man in the Wizarding World. Prongs would have been green."
Remus smiled, nudging his head fondly against Sirius' chest. "What does that make me? The buxom beauty you picked up at some seedy bar and whisked away in to a whirlwind of booze and bullets?"
"Not unless," Sirius nuzzled at his hair, "I can lash you to the bed and have my debauched way with you later."
Remus bit his nipple with a low growl and elicited a moan of protest. "No chance, Black," he murmured, "For the first time in our lives I'm both bigger and stronger than you and I'm damned if I'm not taking full advantage of that."
