Disclaimer: If Remus Lupin was mine, I'd being doing much more than writing stories, let me tell you.
A/N - This is the first in a series of Remus-centric drabbles called "Play On" based on songs that remind me of him. This one is Wolfstar. Though it's not strictly speaking a songfic, the lyrics of the song and the feeling are central to the structure and style of each piece :)
Song: I'm A Fool To Want You – Billie Holiday
I'm a fool to hold you, such a fool to hold you.
To seek a kiss not mine alone, to share a kiss the devil has known.
I'm a fool to want you.
He knew it was foolish. He knew he was being weak, hideously so. Yet every time he saw Sirius standing before him, eyes dark and pleading, he knew he would open the door a little wider. Within seconds, his best friend would be trailing kisses down his neck, his spine, across his stomach.
He knew that, even as Sirius whispered I'm sorry against his skin, he would never stay. Every night that he came, without fail, Sirius would wait until Remus was asleep, or at least pretending, and slip away again into the night. He said never said why, and Remus never asked.
Did Sirius love him? He didn't know. Did it matter? Of course it mattered, though he tried to tell himself it didn't. Remus wanted nothing more than reassurance that he wasn't just like one of those nameless girls that Sirius would bring back to the dormitory when they were at Hogwarts. It was foolish to even hope that he would get it. Sirius rarely said anything to him, even when his mouth wasn't otherwise occupied. It was odd, wrong.
The Sirius that showed up at his door, who kissed him and bruised him, was not the same Sirius he had laughed and explored and rebelled with at Hogwarts. That Sirius had been talkative, energetic, exuberant. This Sirius, with his dark looks his uncontrolled ferocity, was wrong, so wrong. Yet still, Remus could not stop.
In the day, everything was so different. Even if, only hours previously, Sirius had met Remus's gaze with eyes so full of terror and love, he would never face Remus at Order Meetings. He would laugh with James and seem to be almost his old self, while Remus attempted small talk with Lily, who in her turn pretended not to know about any of it, pretended not to be worried about Peter. They were all lying to each other, each and every one.
What ate away at Remus in the small hours of the morning was why. He knew why Lily lied, why James lied, why he himself opened his mouth and said I'm fine, but Sirius baffled him. Sirius always had baffled him, but never like this. Was it that his lover suspected him of betraying his friends, or that Sirius himself was the traitor?
Some nights, it all seemed so clear: Sirius thought he was betraying them. It was clear in the way he pushed Remus against the wall of his dingy flat, his rage and his hurt pouring out of him in violent, passionate kisses. Others, Remus could not erase from his mind images of another faceless, dark haired man who cried out just as he did, the skull and snake tattoo on his arm darkening as he raked his nails down Sirius's back.
Yet despite the overwhelming wrongness of the entire, sordid situation, Remus could not bring himself to turn away the figure at his door. He didn't just want Sirius. Remus was used to denying himself the things he simply wanted. He'd spent his entire life not getting them, after all. Sirius was a need: simple and base. So although Remus promised himself time and time again that this time would be the last, that he would simply say no, time and time again he found his resolve melting away.
But he never once forgot.
Even as he wrapped himself up in Sirius, even as he heard his name whispered in the dark; he never once allowed himself to forget what a fool he was.