Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. If I did, the following story would be absolutely canon, an J.K. Rowling would be reading along with a face along the lines of 0_o. I don't make any money from this, just use the reviews to stroke my ego.
Shame
I pray for someone to ache for me the way I ache for you....Once I swore I would die for you but I never meant it like this. ~ Stabbing Westward, "Shame"
Remus Lupin has never been a stranger to shame. He is acquainted with it at the tender age of seven. Even before he is able to understand lycanthropy any further than what he feels and sees and dreams of at night, he knows it is something to be ashamed of. When he meets his friends he is bashful first about his quietude and serious thoughts, and later about the changes that mark his body as a man's long before his friends' voices have even cracked. They are jealous; he is only ashamed. In Potions he finds himself so bereft that he entreats Severus Snape for help. His shame doubles when his friends find out and take the mickey for it.
But in his seventh year at Hogwarts, Remus Lupin has learned to walk hand in hand with his shame. At the slightest glance or brush of skin from Sirius, the color rises in his cheeks and he is sure that someone, anyone (not James, please, anyone but James) will see and they will know. And when Sirius answers the silent wishes that Remus harbors, he is grateful that it is dark when Sirius visits him. He cannot help but feel ashamed when he is made giddy by whispers of, "Gods, Moony," in his ear.
No one knows, of course. Not even James and Peter; or rather, especially not them. Remus, in his shame, is careful about every time his eye wanders, and he has become old hand at every privacy spell ever invented. He is lying in bed four days after the full moon, listening to Peter's snores, waiting for James's loud, even breathing to join it, feeling ashamed. The full moon always makes Sirius antsy; there is no sex for days and it always makes Remus strangely frightened of everyone else in the castle. On some intellectual level that is not on good terms with his shame, he knows that Sirius is not just a bed partner but a best friend. He has particularly intimate knowledge of the many limitations of a werewolf's life, and has never complained. This doesn't ease Remus's fears whatsoever.
His breath catches when he hears James crawl from his bed. He knows it is James by the sound of each foot hitting the floor separately and the relative quiet of his feet. From the many nights of waiting anxiously for his roommates to sleep, he knows their sounds: Peter's bed squeaks horribly any time he so much as imagines rolling over; Sirius hits the floor with both feet (at least at night; before class is another story) and nearly always bangs his knee on the trunk at the foot of his bed. James, star Quidditch player, moves with a grace matched only by the girls who chase him unsuccessfully, and his bed dare not squeak for fear of being beaten into submission.
James takes two small, smooth steps toward his bed and Remus buries his face in his pillow, feigning a light snore that Sirius tells him is endearing. His curtains are rustled momentarily, and then James is retreating in the opposite direction. Peter and the door to the stairs are both in the other way; Sirius is the only possible destination to the right of James's bed. Remus frowns. They are going marauding without him, it seems. It's not new, of course, and James can't know that it is supposed to be his own night alone with Sirius. Disappointed, he rolls to face right and resigns himself to sleep.
Until a small, soft thump against the floor makes his eyes snap wide open and he nearly sits up in bed. There is a whisper of bed curtains, a happy groan, and then a surprised, (but pleased, Remus notes sadly) "Oh!" There is another rustle and then Remus does sit up and, sucking in air as slowly and surreptitiously as he knows how, he pokes his head from between his own bed hangings. There are a significant number of soft, slithering noises coming from Sirius's bed. He knows that he should go to sleep, that James and Sirius are incomprehensible to all normal people (and werewolves, apparently). Instead, he is pulling his wand and aiming it at the drapery around where Sirius sleeps.
In a few quiet words and a small puff of magic that is like a sigh of defeat, he is staring at James's naked back and bottom. Remus is absolutely certain that this is abnormal. Sirius is a dedicated "boxers only, if that" sort of bloke, but Peter and James have always been, like himself, firm believers in pajamas. Remus is hiding a decade of scars; Peter, a layer of baby fat that refuses to drop away even at seventeen. James is simply cold-natured; Remus is fairly certain that the Potter household is not home to a single pair of short pants.
Nevertheless, what he is seeing is undoubtedly James Potter's lean, bare back. Remus is, as usual, beginning to feel ashamed of himself. It's not that he hasn't seen James in any and all states of undress. Hogwarts's tendency towards large communal showers has assured that the boys know each crooked little line of their friends' bodies. Even if Remus had not known that it was James who was up and about by his distinctive sounds, he would have known from the lone scar which cuts across James's right shoulder blade. It is another mark of Remus's shame, and they do not talk about the night that it happened. Sometimes, Remus wonders if he will one day be forced to sit alone in an empty room, thinking of absolutely nothing, in order to escape the painful bloom of embarrassment. In any case, it is not the sight of James's body that has Remus out of his element. It is the uncanny feeling that something in the air has shifted; that he has caught a single moment in time that his eyes were not meant to find.
His eyes follow the pale line of James's scar across his shoulder and down his right arm to learn that the hand attached to it is gripping one sharp hip. With horror he realizes that Sirius Black is bare-arsed naked and, for a reason he wishes he didn't understand, gripping the headboard with both hands, forehead resting against it. If he were the one kneeling on the mattress behind him, Remus is certain that he would be blushing like mad, but now James's left arm is moving and though the rest of his body blocks the full view, Remus knows just where those quick, clever fingers are disappearing to. He hears a low moan and realizes with a pang of despair that James has no shame. He has laid no barriers between his actions and the world outside. He is everything that Remus is not.
He has never had Sirius like this: shameless, open, submissive. If he is technical, he has never had Sirius at all. Although the wolf in him protests at being dominated so completely, the human sensibilities in him will take Sirius any way they can get him. Besides, his body now welcomes the intrusion that means that Sirius is on him, in him, all around him. It means that they are touching and kissing and Sirius is groaning those things that he loves but mortify him beyond belief. For weeks after that first time, he heard every sentence from Sirius's mouth not as, "Pass the butter," or, "Give me your Transfiguration homework," but, "Merlin, Moony, so tight!" It is almost unbearable to be around him because he should be the happiest he's ever been. His shame, it seems, is out to ruin everything that could possibly make him happy.
He realizes that he has been averting his eyes and when he looks back, he regrets it. James and Sirius, like twins in their everyday synchronicity, are moving together seamlessly. Remus silently acquiesces that compared to this, his own fumblings with Sirius are a sad sort of joke. James's head is bent to Sirius's shoulder, his left hand over the other boy's on the headboard, and the only sounds are the quiet noises they try not to make. Remus, who doesn't remember a time before his senses were sharp and clear, considers that, were Peter awake, he would probably not be able to distinguish the sounds from the normal tossings and turnings of the night. For some reason, this is what finally manages to hurt him. The only part of his curse that once seemed almost a gift is now turned cruelly against him; even if he pulls the cover over his head, he will hear each small whimper and groan as James claims what has always been his.
He is thanking every god he knows of that there are no words involved when James throws his head back and, in a throaty voice Remus has never heard him use, croaks, "So perfect together." The answer is only a moan and a rough shift of Sirius's hips. Remus considers killing himself. It would be stupid, he knows, but he cannot imagine such a human thing as shame living on after death. It could be the one thing he would never be second to James at, if he were to die first. He is struck with a sudden horrifying ripple of uncertainty that targets his gut and his jealousy. Has he been doing this with James all along? Moony's senses may be perfect, but in his sleep he is just as dead to the world as any teenage boy. He should've known that there could be no exception to the rule that stated that Sirius could do nothing without James.
Unable to bear the humiliation of being played the fool any longer, Remus grabs for the bottle of Dreamless Sleep at his bedside. He tosses it back with a wince that comes when doing something not strictly within the rules, although four days after the phase he assumes he is still within his rights. He has not been quick enough, though, and before the darkness can overtake him, he is watching James's movements become more and more an off-kilter jerk, and the hand that has been resting innocently against a hip is now slipping around to the front. In moments he can see and hear and, in a vicious burst of sensory detail, smell the pleasure that rolls from Sirius as he is tipped over the edge, and it is so familiar that Remus is aching. James's hips slam once, twice, and then he is gone as well, every defined muscle catching and releasing, falling against his best friend in the pleased, empty exhaustion that follows such encounters.
And then they are sliding down the headboard and Remus is sliding away from reality towards the foggy world of sleep. His eyes are blurred and his other senses are beginning to dull mercifully, but he is aware, dimly, that they are kissing. That is wrong, that is not meant to happen, and when Sirius whispers, "I love you," Remus's whole world goes black. Miraculously, he is asleep and he is glad; it is the closest thing he knows to death. Somewhere deep inside the peaceful void of slumber, he is swallowing all of his shame and dreading the days to come.
A/N: So hopefully that was decent? I'm just looking for feedback on this, it's my first real foray into the world of slash (although I've been reading it for years). I have to say, I was very pleased with myself when I finished it at 3 a.m. on the beach. This is now a two-shot. Yay me!