A.N.: This is set just before the events of Order of the Phoenix, between the time when Ron and Hermione arrive at Grimmauld Place and when Harry does.

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter

"Sirius, it's your turn to do the dishes," Molly announced as she pushed herself up from her seat at the table in the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. It was obvious by her tone of voice that she was slightly worried – or perhaps completely terrified – by the prospect of the Marauder touching her beloved crockery with his delinquent digits.

Sirius sighed and stood as well, looking as though he wanted to be the one doing the washing up even less than Molly wanted him to be the one doing the washing up. He waved his wand at the various plates, bowls and cutlery that covered the table, sending them all flying in the general direction of the sink.

"Hey!" Mundungus exclaimed as a plate soared passed him, nearly hitting him on the head.

"Honestly!" Molly sighed, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at Sirius, who was smirking. "You're as bad as Fred and George! Mundungus, get your feet off of the table; that is where we eat!"

Mundungus grumbled, but reluctantly lowered his smelly dragon-hide boots from the surface of the kitchen table. Standing to leave, he bid those still left in the kitchen a farewell, and began muttering something about having to 'see a man about some dragonfly' as he shuffled out of the room.

Molly went to follow the criminal, but she paused behind Remus' chair as she passed, placing her hands on the back of his chair and leaning into the werewolf's ear. "Make sure there's still some crockery left by the time he's finished, please."

Remus chuckled. "Yes, Molly," he nodded as the redheaded witch left the two Marauders in the kitchen alone – which was a frightening prospect in and of itself – and went to help Sirius with the dishes. The Animagus had already filled the sink with hot, soapy water, and was now holding one of the most expensive china plates in his hand.

"No," Remus told him authoritatively, taking the plate out of his hand and replacing it with a tea towel. "I wash, you dry."

Sirius scowled for a moment, but when reminded of the time when the kitchen floor had been rendered for all intents and purposes invisible under pieces of broken crockery (incidentally the last time it had been Sirius' turn to do the dishes) he grudgingly agreed to the demotion. Remus rolled up his sleeves and began to work.

They worked in silence for a few moments, the only sound being the clink of plates and the sloshing of water. Remus handed the newly clean plates and cups and cutlery to Sirius who dried them quickly, with nimble and tattooed fingers.

Ever since that night in the Shrieking Shack, when he had learned of Peter's betrayal and Sirius' innocence, Remus had been transfixed by Sirius' tattoos. The Animagus had certainly not had any before he went to Azkaban. He had often joked in the common room about getting them one day, but Remus had always assumed that his ambitions to cover himself with ink were simply an extension of his rebellion against his family. It was plain to the werewolf that the tattoos that now adorned Sirius' pale flesh had more significance than a stubborn resistance of his family's traditionalist ideas, and he found himself aching to find out what they meant.

From his position in front of the sink, Remus could only see the tattoos on his friend's fingers, little symbols and letters in spiky black ink that he didn't understand. Remus knew that there were more – the Animagus' chest was decorated similarly, and Remus was sure that he had seen something on his friend's back once…

"Moony?"

The nickname snapped Remus out of his reverie, and he realised he had been holding a soap-sud-covered plate above the sink for a whole minute while he wondered at Sirius' tattoos.

"Sorry," the werewolf shook his head and handed the plate over to his friend.

"You okay?" Sirius asked, with a small concerned smile.

"Yeah," Remus nodded. "I just…" He gazed at the decorations on the Animagus' knuckles once more. "I was just looking at your tattoos."

"Oh," Sirius mumbled, holding his hand out in front of him to study the ink himself. "Yeah, I suppose I have rather a lot."

Remus finished his next plate and handed it over. "Do they have any specific meaning?"

"A few of them do," Sirius explained, placing the plate down on the pile on the worktop in front of him. He pointed to a little Roman numeral number ten on the middle knuckle of his left hand. "That means I was in for ten years. I have the five somewhere, I can't remember…" he shrugged, and continued drying.

"They're Muggle tattoos," Remus remarked, reasoning that as Sirius hadn't asked him to stop, he was permitted to continue questioning.

"Yeah; when the Dementors suck all your powers away, you have to use Muggle equipment. I think one of the inmates got his Muggleborn wife to sneak in needles and ink back in 1983, and we all started getting them. They got a bit addictive."

"Did you give anyone else a tattoo?"

Sirius nodded. "I even did a few of these." He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a small tattoo by his elbow that Remus had never noticed before: a winged cherub holding a harp. The design was beautiful. "I did that back in 1990."

"Wow," Remus breathed, marvelling at the artwork; out of the four Marauders, Sirius had without doubt been the best artist, but Remus had never guessed that some of the tattoos had been his own designs. Sirius rolled up his sleeve again, hiding the cherub under the fabric.

"When did you get your last one?" the werewolf asked, washing the last plate up.

"Um… 1994?" he looked briefly up at the ceiling as he tried to remember.

"1994? You had escaped by then."

Sirius nodded. "I stole some tattoo equipment when I escaped – don't look at me like that, Moony, you can't live on the run without having to break the law a little – and gave myself this while I was hiding in the cave outside Hogsmeade." He revealed a tiny 'HP' tattooed in the crook of his left thumb. "I didn't get rid of the needles or the ink. I was thinking about giving myself one last one when all of this is over."

Remus was amazed. He had no idea about the relevance of the ink permanently etched onto his friend's skin. It was all so exciting, so intriguing… so tempting.

No, he told himself. It was a ridiculous idea. He was Rational Remus; Rational Remus did not make time for such absurd notions.

Yet…

Remus stared down at Sirius' tattoos and thought that maybe, just this once, he should leave Rational Remus behind, and be Reckless Remus instead.

"Sirius?" he asked, handing over the final plate to the Animagus.

"Hmm?" he asked, looking up at his friend.

"Would you give me one?"

~{G}~

Sirius' room was at the end of the second floor corridor. All of the live-in members of the Order of the Phoenix – who consisted of Sirius, Remus, Arthur and Molly, though Tonks was always welcome to a room when meetings ran past one or two in the morning – had their rooms on this floor. Because of this, Remus found himself sneaking almost on tip-toe down the corridor to his friend's room, feeling much like a teenager again, and that he was helping Sirius and James with whatever hair-brained scheme that the two of them had come up with this time.

He knocked quietly on the door and waited to be let in, using the secret knock that they had developed in their third year. The door opened an inch, and half of Sirius' face appeared in the gap. Seeing that it was only Remus, and not someone with whom he could possible get in trouble, he opened the door just wide enough to let the werewolf through, clicking it shut again when the werewolf was inside.

"You alright?" the Animagus asked with a wicked grin on his face; there were no actual rules at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix – at least not nearly in the same sense that there were at Hogwarts – but if the unofficial authority, i.e. Molly Weasley, were to find out about this, the two men had no doubt that she would go full McGonagall on them.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Remus nodded, noting how his voice suddenly sounded hollow. There was a dead weight in his stomach and he tried to remember just when he had become so nervous.

"You sure?"

Remus gulped and looked over at the bed. There was an odd assortment of items laid out on Sirius' bedside table: a needle, a bottle of ink, a bottle of Firewhiskey, some cotton wool balls, a face-down piece of parchment, and pair of gloves, all centred around an ash tray - although that had been there anyway. He hadn't realised just how clinical this process was, and he found himself wondering briefly if Sirius had had access to all of these things when he had been in Azkaban, or when he had been on the run.

"Yupp," Remus nodded, determined. Rational Remus, who had been voicing his objections to this blatant act of temerity all day, would get no say tonight.

Sirius grinned. He moved forward and gestured for Remus to lie on the bed, peeling the piece of parchment off of the wooden surface of his bedside table and holding it protectively against his chest so that Remus couldn't see whatever was on it.

"What is that?" Remus asked, eyeing the piece of parchment with slight trepidation as he lay on the bed.

"The design," Sirius explained smugly. Remus – in another attempt to be reckless – had allowed Sirius to come up with the design without him seeing it. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea, a display of trust towards someone who had been misrepresented so horrifically for most of his adult life; now, however, he doubted just how wise that decision had been.

There was also another part of this that Remus was beginning to deeply regret: the location he had chosen for the image. There was really only one place that he could have the design inked on to his skin where it could be applied without Sirius having to drag the needle across the train map of scars that criss-crossed over the werewolf's entire body: the very bottom of his stomach on the right side and over his hipbone. From what little he knew about tattoos, he could gather that this was going to be rather painful.

Nevertheless, he exposed the skin while Sirius put on the gloves and began soaking a cotton wool ball with Firewhiskey; Remus found himself slightly confused at this action, for when he had seen the alcohol he had assumed that it was intended to be used as some form of crude and primitive anaesthetic.

"What are you doing?" Remus asked, ignoring Rational Remus as he began to rear his annoying head.

"The alcohol cleans the skin," Sirius explained, wiping the soaked cotton cool ball over the exposed flesh.

"Oh," Remus mumbled, calming down slightly, and lying back so that all he could see was the dull wood of the Animagus' ceiling.

"Calm down, Moony. It'll be fine," Sirius assured him, and Remus could hear the smirk in his voice.

Remus chuckled slightly. "If I had a Galleon for every time you'd told me that and it hadn't been fine…"

There was a rustle of parchment in the background as Sirius waved his wand over the design, muttering an incantation. As Remus watched, a copy of the design made of golden light seemed to peel off of the parchment like wallpaper, and was being soaked up into the end of Sirius' wand. The Animagus levitated the magical implement and muttered another spell so that the design that the wand had memorised now projected from the tip in a shaft of golden light. Sirius adjusted the floating wand so that the design was shining where it would be drawn, and reached for the needle.

"Did Hermione teach you how to do that?" Remus smirked, purposely looking away from the now suddenly terrifying needle as Sirius readied the ink.

"Of course," Sirius told him. There was now a buzzing noise coming from the Animagus' direction. Remus tensed instinctively, his nerves almost getting the better of him; luckily, he was a Gryffindor, and he would not chicken out.

There was a shuffling, and then, without warning, the needle was on his skin. To his surprise, it didn't hurt; that part of his stomach was too fleshy for the needle to cause him too much pain – the vibrations only felt a little odd as the ink stained his skin.

He lay there as his friend drew the needle across his skin for what had to be half the night. As the artwork was being applied, they talked non-stop, and Remus found it incredibly refreshing that he and Sirius finally had some time to themselves. What with the return of the Dark Lord, the reforming of the Order of the Phoenix, Sirius being on the run, and Remus having to spend a vast majority of his time underground among the other werewolves, they hadn't had much time to just talk.

They talked about everything that came into their heads, from their favourite foods to their apprehension about seeing Harry again soon, to whether or not Remus was developing feelings for Tonks (Remus denied it while Sirius insisted that he was) and even the more painful topics centred around Lily, James, and what was to become of the wizarding world now that Voldemort was back.

At some point during the night Sirius had lit a cigarette, so that Remus had to deal with the smell of tobacco as well as the vibrations from the needle. He was pleasantly surprised about the little amount of pain that the application of the ink was causing him, but this relief was cut short when the needle was dragged over his pelvis. The pain was sudden and sharp; he gasped in shock and clutched the sheet a little tighter, trying to keep as still as possible so that the tattooist did not get jogged while tracing the design.

"Sorry," Sirius had mumbled. "Should have told you about that."

Eventually, however, the buzzing stopped.

"Finished," declared Sirius, stubbing out his cigarette in the ash tray on his bedside table and reaching over to retrieve a hand mirror from one of the drawers.

Remus pushed himself into more of a sitting position, wincing slightly at how tender his abdomen felt.

"You ready?" Sirius asked, purposefully holding the mirror so that Remus couldn't see the reflection of the design inked onto his flesh.

"Ready," Remus nodded confidently. Sirius lowered the mirror, and Remus gasped.

The overall design was of a large, five-pointed star – but on closer inspection the lines of the star were not made of lines at all, but of writing repeated over and over again: 'Psalm 121:6'. The centre of the star was equally decorated, filled with a chaotic collection of symbols and motifs.

From what Remus could see – though admittedly he could have spent hours studying the design and still be discovering new things – there was a paw-print, a pair of antlers, a lightning bolt, a cross, a cloud, two crossed wands, a book with the title The Magician's Nephew – accompanied with another entitled The Last Battle – and a Muggle record, which was nameless. The design was so busy that it almost made his tired eyes water, but instead he just looked up at his friend and grinned.

"It's amazing," he breathed, and Sirius' worried look broken into a smile of his own. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he beamed.

~{G}~

"Mundungus, get your feet off of the table!" Molly screeched.

Mundungus scowled but reluctantly took his feet off of the kitchen table.

The scene had been repeated in Number 12 Grimmauld Place almost every day since the Order of the Phoenix had been reformed: the Order members would trudge bleary-eyed into the kitchen, food would be prepared, and Molly would tell Mundungus off for putting his feet up on the table. The scene rarely varied.

Remus winced slightly as he sat down next to Sirius, hoping that none of his carefully-applied, post-tattoo bandages had come loose.

"Sirius," Molly began hesitantly, putting a rack of toast on the table. The Animagus looked up at her. "Did you notice anything strange in your room last night?"

Sirius looked up at her, innocently confused – a look perfected during his Hogwarts years. "No, can't say I did. Why?"

"Oh," Molly said, "it's just I thought I heard a Fanged Vileface in your room."

"A Fanged Vileface?" the Animagus enquired. "I've never heard of such a thing."

"It's an annoying flying creature," Molly explained, taking her seat at the table. "It makes a buzzing sound and smells of cigarettes."

Sirius and Remus quickly glanced at each other, so briefly that it went unnoticed by those sat around them.

"N-no, I never noticed anything," Sirius insisted. "Perhaps it flew out before I woke up, I kept the window open."

"Oh," Molly shrugged as she took a piece of toast from the rack. "Well, as long as it's gone now."

Sirius and Remus smirked at each other.

A.N.2: The words of Psalm 121:6 (NIV) are: "the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night."

A.N.3: I am not a tattoo artist, I do not have a tattoo, and all I know about the process of getting one has been learned from Miami and LA Ink, so I apologise if I have made any mistakes.