Author's Note: The summary of this fic is actually a prompt that I received. I was hesitant to write about epilepsy because it isn't something I am very informed about. Then I did what I should have done from the beginning; I wrote about lycanthropy. So if you are offended by my approach to epilepsy in this fic, please remember that this is based off of how Remus deals with lycanthropy. In my opinion, Remus views his lycanthropy as an imperfection. He abhors it. And so, in this fic, his disorder is something which he dislikes about himself.
Two forms collided and suddenly Sirius was incapable of recalling anything other than the sensation of having Remus ensnared in his arms; the silken softness that Sirius' hand met as it slipped beneath his shirt in pursuit of skin; Remus' breath against his lips; the brush of fingers against his cheeks; the pressure of Remus' chest against him as he responded to Sirius' touch and arched, closing some of the space between them; Remus' tongue as he kissed him, wanting and taking what was his.
With Remus' body so closely interwoven with his, it didn't matter to Sirius that they were in the stall of a very public and very smelly toilet in the back of the seedy Student Union bar. It didn't matter that some feeble attempt at a door was all that cut them off from the rest of the world. Remus assaulted Sirius' senses so thoroughly, his only mercy being that he was kissing him and that he kept kissing him...
Until suddenly he stopped.
Sirius' grip around Remus tightened as he found he wasn't so much holding Remus against him as he was holding him up. It happened as quickly as they had crossed that boundary from friendship into something else entirely; dizzy and losing his footing, Remus slumped to the floor, the strength in Sirius' arms lessening the impact that awaited him but not by much.
His lips still swollen and slightly parted, Remus attempted to speak but his words were slurred. Sirius would have mistaken him for pissed had it not been for the twitching. He found his own fingers were trembling as he brushed the hair from about Remus' face, shifting so that Remus' head rested against his chest, desperately wanting and willing it to stop.
He must have called out for help because help came but he couldn't remember what noise might have left his lips at that moment. Suddenly Remus Lupin, the man whose presence and effect on him had been as powerful as a gale, was more vulnerable than Sirius had ever seen him. In a matter of seconds Sirius realised he'd only ever seen one side of Remus, the side Remus wanted him to see out of shame at the other, the other being painfully beyond his control and beyond him to keep at bay.
"I'm Remus Lupin, I grew up just outside Preston, and I'll be reading History."
Sirius had scoffed in response. Remus was the only Fresher student who made use of the word 'reading' with reference to what they were studying, the only Fresher to take their education seriously from their first night in their new dorm. But it was something he would come to remember about the boy who only fascinated him increasingly as time passed.
The noise did not escape Remus' notice however. From across the small room, crammed full of girls in tight dresses and heels so high that they struck Sirius as a tad ridiculous and boys in shirts, ironed for the last time by their mothers, Remus' eyes met his. Sirius never caught the name of the girl he was talking to at the time. Marl-something. Remus smiled from across the room, a genuine smile, the sort that gave Sirius the impression that this boy had seen right through him - not the hair or the cheekbones, but the whole package - and had come to the conclusion that it wasn't quite as bad as Sirius thought.
Then it was Sirius' turn to speak. The girl nudged him to indicate that it was now his opportunity to introduce himself. All eyes were on him and for the first time in as long as he could remember they were unwelcome.
"The name's Sirius Black," he said, flicking a lock of hair from across his eyes and displaying all the casual elegance he was born with, enough to earn him acceptance in such a situation.
Remus' form was now a blurred shape on the other side of the room, one that demanded Sirius' attention. But Sirius had always hated demands being made of him and so it was not until he was pulled into a deep conversation about how many liquors a man could consume in an entire night and still be standing - himself, Remus, a James Potter and a Peter Pettigrew - that he allowed himself to look at him. In a matter of seconds, Sirius had established that Remus' eyes were brown, the warm kind that flickered in the light and drew you in deeper like the siren's song. Not only that, but he was discovering all too quickly that he was already rather fond of them.
It was over as quickly as it came and Remus had been hoisted into a sitting position, a glass of water shoved into his hands. A man stood over Sirius, taller, older, claiming to be a nurse and telling him that Remus would be perfectly alright, just a little confused.
That makes two of us, Sirius thought bitterly but the sting of being kept in the dark was quickly overpowered by concern. He could feel it taking root in him, piercing him from the inside out, concern about the fact that Remus had something tethered to him, something which meant he couldn't be reckless and stupid like Sirius. It didn't scare Sirius but he felt he should have known. He felt dirty, like a temptress, having swept Remus along with him until he'd forgotten to take his medicine, downed almost an entire pitcher's worth of Jägerbombs and Sirius honestly didn't have the foggiest what triggered a fit, but nothing about that night had been ordinary or routine.
Remus couldn't meet his eye. He took the proffered hand but released it as soon as he was back on his own two feet, dusting his trousers in an attempt to recover the dignity that he felt he had lost. His forehead was covered in a slight sheen of sweat and his body lacked the fluidity of movement that he'd had only moments before. Shoulders slightly hunched and a hand still trembling slightly as he ran it through his hair, Remus took an uneasy step before halting and finally, but with great effort, bringing his gaze to meet Sirius'.
"So I guess we call it a night?"
It would later occur to Sirius that Remus must have thought that what he'd witnessed changed matters, that he wouldn't want Remus around after seeing what Remus most loathed about himself. It would eventually occur to him that Remus' inability to love himself made it nigh on impossible to comprehend someone else loving him. But for now...
"I'll walk you home. Same corridor, right?"
Sirius made a feeble attempt at a laugh but it wasn't enough to crack the hard exterior which Remus had somehow come into possession of the moment he'd regained conciousness.
Sirius could count on one hand how many stars were visible in the night sky from his back garden of 12 Grimmauld Place. Stars simply didn't shine in London. But now he was no longer in London and even as the moon grew closer to reaching it's apex there were more stars in the sky than he'd ever seen in the capital. Lying on the damp grass of the shoreline, an entire glittering sea of stars stretched out above him and Sirius realised exactly what he'd been missing. Of course it was due, in part, to the fact that he had Remus Lupin, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew sprawled out on the grass beside him.
"You don't really think she likes this Snivellus bloke, do you?" James asked. His inability to comprehend how someone as attractive as Lily Evans could very possibly be dating someone as foul as Severus Snape was visible in his very expression.
"Enough to go to the same university as him, you mean?" Sirius replied idly. "Nah..."
Remus turned his head and caught Sirius' gaze in a sly look of warning. Be kind it said and Sirius was hard pressed to disobey.
"She'll come to her senses soon enough. Anyway, I hear Snivellus got with Mar-"
"So what's the plan for Thursday?" Remus asked Peter, lifting his head so as to peer at him across Sirius whose lips Remus had covered with a careful hand.
Sirius attempted to struggle, but not enough to overpower Remus simply because he hadn't wanted to. But as Peter droned on about pregaming at their dorms before heading to the SU, Sirius somehow found himself freed from Remus' grasp, their fingers now interlaced and buried in the grass between them for concealment.
"You'll be there, right? Have you even been to the SU bar before?" Peter suddenly enquired, sitting up somewhat so as to see Remus better from across his comrades.
"Wh- oh.. 'Course, Pete. I wouldn't miss your birthday." The answer seemed to satisfy Peter. But Remus then loosened his hold on Sirius' hand, shifting so that he cushioned his head with his arms instead.
The stars didn't shine so bright after that.
Remus was anxious at first; his movements were off-key to the music, he cursed himself for not having the wits to leave his cardigan behind as heat closed in on him, and his eyes darted around the crowd uncertain of where they might find solace. Then he honed in on Sirius, Sirius Black who possessed all the spark, the flash, the shock of electricity and all the heat, the vibrancy, the catching quality of fire.
It didn't escape Sirius' notice. Remusdidn't escape Sirius' notice. With one cunning side-step, James was no longer between them but beside them until he'd caught sight of a flicker of red hair and dove into a gap in the crowd in pursuit of it.
Whereas Remus had felt claustrophobic before, Sirius had a strange aura around him which few penetrated and on this occasion he had extended it to include Remus. The pressure of the crowd forced them together even more and now dancing didn't feel quite so foreign to Remus' unpractised feet. Much to his surprise, Remus discovered that synchronising his movements with Sirius' came naturally to him and before he knew it they were so close that their foreheads almost touched and their noses almost grazed; so close that lips hungered to meet and almost did.
Sirius' eyes were locked on Remus'. They burned through him, but it was a pleasant kind of heat that Remus could take. Remus' heart was beating unusually fast but then again he couldn't remember a time when he'd actually been one with the crowd rather than a mere bystander, nor could he remember having Sirius' sculpted form, only accentuated by his fitted t-shirt, just a few tantalising inches from him. Then Sirius' hand found his and his movements slowed. Remus mirrored his action, eyes flitting to the lips that were but a breath from his out of raw, unadulterated instinct.
Sirius' jubilance at the music, at the thrum of the crowd and the energy that coursed through the room, them included, had ceased and was replaced with something.. well, serious. The music was loud enough that they'd be going home with a ringing in their ears but as Sirius finally rested his forehead against Remus' it faded into nothing.
"God, Remus, I want to kiss you."
"Are you happy now? We're back, I'm back. I'm not going to keel over, I promise."
Remus didn't say it unkindly. He even forced a smile to impress upon Sirius how okay he was, but it was clear that that wasn't entirely the case because he fumbled with the key before it finally slid into the lock, nor was that particular smile convincing.
"Unless you plan on tucking me in, you can go back to whatever you were doing."
The tips of Remus' ears turned pink but he swung the door open and entered his small room before Sirius could call him up on exactly what he had said or implied.
"I'm not trying to look after you," Sirius said, lips tugging into a smirk that would only grow more obnoxious and more precious to Remus with time.
Following Remus into the room, he pushed the door shut behind him. It was a great deal tidier here than in Sirius'. There was the customary furniture one would expect from student accommodation, but it lacked the empty take-away packets shoved beneath the sink and all Remus' books and notepads were neatly lined up upon his desk instead of scattered about the floor. A single poster hung on the wall above Remus' desk, the album cover for Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. It would have been a cliché - after all, almost every student owned it whether they listened to the band or not - except it showed signs of wear at the corners indicating that it pre-dated Remus' residence here.
"Besides," Sirius continued, filling the silence and offering Remus the comfort of knowing he wasn't under scrutiny as he retrieved a small bottle of tablets from a drawer in his desk, extracted one and swallowed it. "You know well enough what I was doing."
Can we go back to that?An unspoken request.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Sirius asked instead. He was all too conscious of the hurt that rung in his voice but it was wholly unjustified. Remus was entitled to his secrets, Sirius just didn't want him to have chosen to keep them, covet them, until that choice was robbed from him altogether in such a terrifying manner.
"It didn't strike me as important," Remus answered, once more struck with the inability to look Sirius in the eye.
"Not important?" Sirius asked. "So I knock you against a bathroom door and snog the living daylights out of you, only to have you collapse on me.. and you don't think it's important?"
Sirius didn't mention his immense relief at the fact that it wasn't something more life-threatening, at the fact that Remus wasn't quite on his death-bed but diagnosed with something that made sense to him. That part he'd keep to himself.
"It's not-it doesn't normally happen."
Remus leant against his desk, summoning the strength to once more meet Sirius' gaze and dare him to say more on the matter.
"I didn't want you to know," Remus finally confessed. "I thought it would scare you off, my.. imperfections."
Remus jammed his eyes tightly shut as if making a wish that the confrontation would dissolve altogether but when he'd opened his eyes Sirius was exactly where he'd left him, one eyebrow raised and his hands in his pockets, surprisingly cool about it all considering he was probably the most fiery, temperamental person Remus had met at university so far.
"Fuck, alright, if you still want to kiss me, just do it."
And that's exactly what Sirius did. In one swift movement, he'd crossed the room to where Remus stood, knocking him back against the desk as for the second time that night they met in a collision of deep kisses, hard and rough but succulent and...
"Remus," Sirius breathed against his lips. He felt as if something needed to be said, but whatexactly was beyond him. But the tenderness with which he brushed the hair from Remus' face just as he had earlier but under much better circumstances this time, combined with the gentle manner in which he cupped Remus' chin after he'd said it, keeping him where he could look after him, but only because that's what you did when you cared about someone... Sirius couldn't be certain, but he hoped this said it for him.