A/N: Another one. I think it's safe to say that I'm addicted. Rated M for sexual situations and Sirius's spicy language.

These things don't happen overnight, even after you've had a few pints and the room starts to haze over and you have that gut feeling that you're about to do something beyond idiotic and you end up groping some girl in the bathroom stall and next thing you know you're out cold on the linoleum and you've forgotten your own gender. If I knew how it started, I could backtrack resourcefully, but all I remember is some pompous remark that boiled down into a challenge: "lycanthropes can't hold their liquor", and I remember thinking how much I hated being called a lycanthrope and how much liquor I really did consume, which was a lot, and which was probably the reason I was lying on the linoleum unearthing patterns in the ceiling like clouds in the sky.

I want to find the poor girl and apologize, but the world is spinning like a top and colors swim through my senses like a kaleidoscope. A few times I have to empty my stomach and the aftertaste burns in my mouth.

James finds me on the floor looking like death and wrinkles his nose.

"Moony, you tosser, look what you've done to yourself," he says, but his voice is warm and there is a lift to the corner of his mouth. I can't speak, so he just takes his own liberties and pulls me to his feet, hoists me by the underarms and allows my head to flop listlessly onto his shoulder. He smells like firewhiskey. There is a moment of timelessness, but then we're back, and there are lights and music and laughter and my eyes and ears protest this inhumanity, I just want to go back to the linoleum and sleep for a hundred years.

I hear a loud bark of laughter and of course it's Sirius; as soon as he sees us he shakes a girl off his arm and approaches with willowy grace.

"I think I drank London," I say.

I earn another laugh and it's worth it, the headache and the bile and the swimming. James tightens his hold on my arm and Sirius suddenly sobers.

"You need to take him home," James says. I see Sirius's discarded girl looking on with some disappointment.

"Sure thing." Sirius puts my arm around his neck. "Moony, old pal, you're thoroughly arseholed."

For some reason, James still looks solemn. I feel guilty.

"I'm fine," I tell him, managing a smile. "I'm fine."

"Just take care of yourself," he replies sternly; Sirius squeezes his shoulder and I think we're all a little concerned about how I've handled myself tonight.

"C'mon, mate," Sirius says quietly, and he takes me home.

Sirius is taking off my socks and shoes when he says, "He's going to be a dad."

I think that it makes no sense and all the sense in the world.

"He told me tonight," Sirius continues, unbuttoning my shirt and trousers. His fingers slip. "I mean, fuck, I couldn't believe it, Prongs, having a kid? He was so nervous his hands were shaking. So happy. He said that Lily was positively radiant, couldn't really describe it any other way. He just feels obligated now, like he has put everything together and keep us in line." He ponders this and laughs. "Fuck, when he got married I told him he was still a fucking twelve-year-old, what's he doing at the alter? Now he's a father."

There's something inexplicable in Sirius's hunched shoulders and hands, the way his voice cracks and the smile upon his face. "A father."

"I'm glad," I say softly. "He'll make a wonderful father."

Sirius stares into my face. He grins. "It'll be a cute little bugger, yeah?" When he's done, my shirt and trousers are thrown to the side and he is pressing a moist washcloth to my forehead. His eyes sweep downwards.

I'm suddenly very aware of my scars. Each one burns as Sirius traces their crisscrossing patterns with his eyes.

"Remus," he whispers; his voice is laced with pity and I hate it.

"What did you expect?" I say it like I'm angry. I feel vulnerable and confused and hung-over.

Sirius touches a gash near my collarbone and I'm scared by the feelings it elicits in me.

I shove him away. "Don't."

When he looks at me, his gaze is hot. He removes the washcloth from my forehead.

"Don't," I repeat urgently.

I feel his hands exploring my body, my face, fingers over my chest and down to my abdomen, each scar encountered he traces, with ultimate care, and I don't know if he is trying to map my hardships or if he knows something I do not, but as he sinks lower and lower our breathing becomes raspy and I can feel my chest rising and falling in waves.

Sirius whispers throatily, "Turn around."

Somehow, I feel cheated, it doesn't make sense, I don't know where it started or continued or why I'm even here but I do, I feel cheated, because I want to touch him so I'll understand.

"Fuck, Remus, turn around," Sirius hisses.

It doesn't feel real; but when Sirius reaches for me I comply.

Lily has her son, Harry, a beautiful little boy I swear will grow into James. She holds him close, presses him into her heart; and when she smiles, the world rights itself.

Sirius sinks into a fatherly role without much trouble and accordingly, James grants him the title of Godfather. Peter looks disappointed, but I feel happy for them both; when Sirius greets me that night, his pride is tangible.

In a disquieting way, I feel older. When I look in the mirror, I see my youth draining away. I see the war seeping under the cracks and infiltrating our lives.

"We've made it this far, haven't we?" Sirius says, slipping his fingers underneath my jumper. "You shouldn't think about these things."

I feel goaded as his ingenuousness surrounds me. "You can't just sweep it under the carpet like you do your sense," I snap.

"You think too much," Sirius says, smiling. "You always think too much."

As he works at the buttons on my trousers I slap his hands away.

"Moony," he says, "why should anything change?"

I want to tell him that we've already changed but the words are jumbled in my mind. Instead I pull down my shirt and re-button my trousers and leave the bathroom. My bed is cold and empty that night.

I use the time to think. I ask myself what I want. I ask myself what I should do. I ask myself what we've become. But the answers escape me and so I sleep.