Disclaimer: Everything you recognise is on loan from JK Rowling
A/N: A birthday gift for Duck Or Rabbit, since I couldn't find John Barrowman dipped in chocolate.
The first time something happened, Remus wasn't at all sure that it had.
He was in the library, cold hanging in the air and clawing at his skin, his limbs buried beneath two jumpers and his fingers stinging as he worked on his History of Magic essay. Sirius gazed out of the window, a quill loitering unused in his hand, his eyes on the sky and his brain obviously miles from rebellions and conclusions and historical context. James and Peter were lost in the stacks, trying to dig out an obscure book Peter had seen that he thought they could all copy from, and while Remus tutted and worked, Sirius stared, lost in whatever thoughts populated his head.
It didn't matter that there wasn't conversation to fill the space because Remus liked it, having this quiet moment, just them, although even as the thought formed he wasn't sure why, or when, he'd started noting and counting the moments they were alone and marking them as if they were somehow different to all the others. It had just happened, a slow ebbing change in his thoughts, that once upon a time he'd barely noticed it, then he'd started to long for it, and then he'd been irrationally annoyed with the others for always being there.
"Hey Moony, it's snowing."
"What?"
"Frozen white stuff falling from the sky. Look."
Remus leant in, craning his neck to peer out of the window, and his knee knocked against something he felt certain was Sirius' thigh. He stopped, froze, glanced at Sirius' face, looking to see if he'd noticed, but Sirius' gaze traced the rivulets made as the snow caught and melted on the glass.
A taut feeling like panic traversed Remus' stomach, and he swallowed, then realised that he should probably say something, that it was just knees and thighs and under the table proximity, that really it wasn't as big a deal as his stomach and his head seemed to think.
"Oh. Yes. Pretty," he said, and instantly felt ridiculous, as if the words were wrong and his voice was too, as if in the entire history of everything no-one had ever said anything more stupid and irrelevant.
He stared blankly at the window, and the flakes continued to fall as oblivious as Sirius appeared to be, coating the landscape with a frosting straight off the front of a Christmas card.
After a moment Remus turned back to his work, but just to see if he could, if he dared, he left his knee pressed against Sirius' leg.
All of his focus was fixed on waiting for Sirius to shift and move away, but a moment passed, and then another one, the snow faintly tapping at the window, a long enough expanse of time for Remus to think of a sentence and drop it onto the parchment with his quill.
Sirius didn't move.
Remus' stomach throbbed with some new, warm pulse, making him misspell hobgoblin four times in a row. He scratched them out, shooting a cursory glance up in case Sirius noticed the blood he could feel giving him away in his cheeks, in case he could feel the shift in the air, and hear the tangle of new thoughts in his head. But the snow fell and Sirius watched, and Remus thought he was probably imagining the slight upward curl at the corner of his lips.
The second time something happened they were in Hogsmeade.
The snow was feathery on the ground, reaching out and undulating as far as he could see like a vast white duvet, and beyond them the lights of Hogsmeade twinkled, windows lit with enchanted snowflakes that bobbed and span, holly that shone and sang Christmas carols framing the panes.
They were alone, or as alone as it was possible to be on a street bustling with shoppers, where packages bumped against their shins and every other step had to be planned to dodge a small old witch hunched against the cold or an eager child dashing between glittering windows.
They felt alone, though, because James and Peter were long gone, James spotting Lily and darting off under the pretence of securing her assistance with buying something special for his mother, Peter remembering that he had an herbology essay to finish. He'd raced down the street, slipped and catapulted himself head-first into the snow, making a long, Peter-shaped furrow, and then got to his feet, offered them a nonchalant wave as if he couldn't hear them laughing so hard they had to lean on each other for support.
As the moment settled it felt like one of them had orchestrated it, as if it wasn't chance or circumstance but this was purposeful, audaciously designed, that one of them had put their Marauding brain to the task and come up with a plan so fiendish it felt unavoidable and even fated.
Remus watched as laughter turned to clouds on Sirius' lips, then dwindled to a grin as he nestled his chin down into his scarf.
"You want to go and get a drink? I'm freezing my bollocks off."
The third time something happened they were both drunk, too much buttered rum in their systems to resist.
It was just a snowball fight on the way back to the castle, balled snow and laughter and cold trickling down the necks of their coats and making their skin shrink.
At the same time it was anything but just a snowball fight, because they laughed too much and threw too often, goading each other to keep it going long past when their interest would normally have waned.
Sirius staggered from Remus' last and surprisingly accurate shot, laughing and indignant, his fringe already sopping and sticking to his forehead as he leant down unsteadily to scoop up a handful of snow to fire in retaliation. As he patted it together in his hands, drunkenly laughing to himself, Remus ducked behind a tree, peeking out after a moment only to have snow splatter against the bark and unpleasantly into his face, making him splutter even though his cheeks were already too numb with cold to really feel it.
He wasn't sure what they were doing, only that he wanted to keep doing it, that this was a moment he wasn't ready to relinquish, that rum and aloneness and snow was closer to what he wanted than being back in the castle, warm and smug in his bed.
Sirius snorted a laugh and Remus saw his chance. He took out his wand, bent the branch above where Sirius stood, making the end droop so low it almost touched the ground.
He bit back a smile as Sirius looked up when the branch creaked, confused and then abruptly understanding but too late, his hands raised for mercy at the precise moment Remus released the branch and sent it twanging into the air like elastic.
The result was dramatic – better than he'd hoped for – Sirius standing knee-deep in snow with a pile about the same depth slopping down on the top of his head while the rest rained about him like some kind of frigid white confetti. His hands were still raised in supplication, his mouth open in surprise and a little admiration, and Remus stifled a laugh with his reddened, frozen fingers, trying to press it back into his mouth so Sirius wouldn't hear it.
"Oh now you're for it."
Sirius charged – if charged was the word for wading through snow at velocity and flicking it up all around him, paused to grab at the ground and fist an ineffectual handful of snow. Remus backed against the tree, too busy laughing to try and evade whatever was about to happen, and as Sirius advanced he wondered if that was it at all, if he wasn't just curious.
His shoulder blades dug into the bark as Sirius pressed him back, his hand raised into a fist around a small knot of white, and when Sirius's weight dropped against him Remus' mind reeled through explanations, finally settling on a vague one to do with rum.
"What am I for?"
He knew the words were ridiculous, didn't even really make sense, but for once he didn't care, even less so when Sirius smiled, pressed a little harder.
"Oh, I'll – "
Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a girlish giggle on the path behind them, and Sirius' eyes swung away. Two girls cast a glance in their direction, and Sirius dumped the snow on Remus' head unceremoniously and stepped back, his breath quicker and shorter as it flew from his mouth, accompanied by a jibe about revenge.
He swallowed, not knowing quite if it was relief or regret that swirled like a storm in his veins, and as they trudged, cold nipping at his toes and fingers, back up to the castle, he wondered what would have happened if they hadn't been interrupted.
The fourth time something happened, Remus was at the top of the Astronomy Tower, pushing snow into and then out of little piles with the tip of his finger.
For four days – since Hogsmeade – Sirius' eyes had had a harshness to them, his jokes a little sharper and more vindictive, delivered with a sneer rather than his usual indifference. It should have hurt to have that turned in his direction, but at some point during Transfiguration that afternoon Remus had realised what it really meant, the idea swirling in his stomach and becoming more and more concrete, making the warm pulse in his stomach throb all the harder as the thought solidified.
Sirius' footsteps padded on the stairs, and he bit back a smile in the dark as they were accompanied by a muttered swearword and the noise of what could only be a slight skid on the icy stone. Remus pushed a tiny half-snowman he'd been making off the edge of the wall, watching as the snow fell apart as it tumbled.
"I've been looking for you everywhere."
"No you haven't. You've got the map – you came straight here."
"Oh all right."
Remus stared out across the grounds, felt Sirius hovering at his elbow, and this moment wasn't at all like the others. It wasn't barely there, something that Remus worried might be in his head, his wishes and daydreams interfering with his perception of reality. It bit at his skin like the cold, tangibly actual, because the only reason Sirius was here was that he'd been counting moments too, the only reason he'd been acting as he had that the one in Hogsmeade had cut a bit too close to something he wasn't entirely sure he was ready for.
But things changed, and if he was here didn't that mean –
"James needs your help with his Charms homework."
"No he doesn't."
"Well if you're going to be a cock I'll just – "
Sirius was already at the top of the stairs when Remus caught him, fingers tightening on his elbow and pulling him back.
"I meant that's not why you're – at least I hope it's – "
His words dissipated in the frigid air, and all the confidence he'd felt in the previous moment froze with it and dropped away, like the snow he'd pushed thoughtlessly off the edge of the parapet. He raked through Sirius' expression, trying to find what he was looking for in it, wondering what to make of the mixture of surprise, slight intrigue and caution that was writ there. Remus let his fingers drop away and scrunched his toes inside his shoes, not knowing what else to do.
He felt the first flake on his nose, a fleck of cold upon cold on his skin, looked up to where fat, grey clouds hovered above them like a celestial blanket.
"It's snowing again. Look."
Sirius followed his gaze, turned his face up to the sky and stared, while snowflakes tumbled down and settled in his hair, melting almost the instant they had.
"Oh. Right. Pretty."
The corners of his mouth just listed upwards, firing a reckless impulse through Remus like a trigger. He grabbed a fistful of Sirius' sleeve, probably too hard, pressed him back against the wall. His mind reeled, his thoughts screaming about what on earth he thought he was doing, but his body quickly accepted it, shifting into him, making their layers of clothing scratch and merge. For a second Sirius looked like he might smack him, and then his cold palm was flush against Remus' jaw, drawing him in, and the thoughts about what on earth slipped further and further away until he couldn't hear them.
Sirius' lips were cold but still they made heat prickle in his stomach, filtering up into the rest of him. He clutched at Sirius' arm, dragged in a breath of cold, hard air across his mouth, and as kisses went it was more frantic than elegant, more a search for something than having entirely found it.
When Remus pulled away Sirius looked at him, his eyes surprised and pleased, exactly as they had been in the library the night it had started snowing.
"What was – "
"Nothing. Just – something happened."
It wasn't much of an explanation, but Sirius smiled.
"Do you think it might happen again?"
Above them the snow continued to fall, and the fifth time something happened, Remus' fingers shifted on Sirius' arm, bringing him closer and murmuring his affirmative against Sirius' lips.
A/N: Thanks for reading :D. Reviewers get a chilly snog from a frosted Marauder of their choice.