Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, events and/or places that are recognized as being written and created by J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling owns all the characters and places from the Harry Potter books including the ones used in this story.

Hello!! If anyone is following this story, last chapter was about She Who Shall Not Be Named or Tonks, but this chapter is back to Sirius/Remus loveliness!! I'm trying to do a vaguely canon look at Remus's life. Vaguely meaning lots more of him kissing Sirius than there is in the books. Enjoy!

May

Remus's sixth year at Hogwarts

"Helloooooo, Moony!"

Remus yelped and was successful at two things: blinding himself by accidentally wrapping his towel around his face and skidding in a small circle on the recently dampened floor. None of that mattered because, besides his face, he was absolutely and noticeably butt naked.

Remus felt the end happening. He couldn't see, for the love of Merlin he couldn't see. Any second he was going to skid into the wall and knock himself out. Dumbledore was going to find him lying in the 6th year's boy's bathroom naked with a towel over his head and Sirius standing above him looking suspicious. At least he'd leave this world knowing Sirius Black would pay.

He yelped again as he felt two large, bony hands wrap around his hips. "Whoa there," Sirius laughed into his ear, or into the towel pulled over his ear.

"I'm OK," Remus panted. He pulled the towel from his head, pushing his hair in every direction. Remus looked down at his right hip. "You're touching me."

"Yeah?"

"I'm naked."

"So?"

He swiveled back slightly to look at Sirius. "Why'd you call me Moony?"

Sirius sniggered. Remus watched those glorious grey eyes roll down towards Remus's…

"Don't answer that," Remus said, blushing so hard he could feel the heat on his cheeks.

Sirius shrugged, squeezed Remus's hips and then let go. "Well, you shouldn't have that out for display then."

"It wasn't out for display." Remus turned around and watched Sirius's glorious gray eyes roll down towards his…

Remus wrapped his towel around himself and if it was possible to blush more, he just invented it. "Here's a lesson the many nannies of the Ancient and Most Noble House forgot to teach their paychecks."

"Noble and Most Ancient," Sirius corrected leaning against one of the sinks. He motioned for Remus to carry on.

"If a door is closed…" Remus stepped up close to Sirius. "You KNOCK!"

Sirius coiled back, shoving his hands over his ears. "Maybe I did knock and you didn't hear me."

Remus sent him the dirtiest look he could muster, which was pretty dirty; it involved half-lidded eyes and an angry pout. "Don't lie to me. You apparated in somehow and you know it. I didn't even hear the door open!"
Sirius rose onto the tips of his toes and hunched his back. "That's because I'm a secret undercover agent able to silently enter any impenetrable fortress," he said, creeping stealthily in Remus's direction.

"Yeah," Remus laughed, pushing Sirius away. "You're a regular padfoot. You're definitely not the loudest person on Earth I've ever met."

"Moony," Sirius whined.
Remus turned from him and went back to his mirror. He had lived six blissful years without getting a nickname. He didn't want a nickname. He didn't see the point of them when he had a perfectly nice short name to be called by if someone needed to call him. The last thing he wanted was strangers asking him why his friends called him Daffodil all the time (which he, thank the higher powers, convinced James to not call him). Remus grabbed his hair brush. "Are you going to stop calling me Moony?"

Sirius shook his head, grinning. "Not this time, Daffodil." Sirius jumped up onto the other sink, either not noticing or pretending to not notice that the faucet was on. "We need secret identities anyway. For The Map."

Remus started fiercely brushing his hair. That year he grew it out so that it fell just around his shoulders. And secretly, he was in love with it. "I guess Moony is fine. The others will think it has something to do with what I am and not…"

"You're fine ass…ets?"

Remus didn't think it was possible to blush as much as he was now. He could see it all over his reflection. It started in his cheeks and led a blotchy red trail down his neck, over his collar bone, across his chest. He ignored Sirius's comment. Maybe it was meant to be witty and totally Sirius, but it was comments like those that made Remus think too much. Think about things that were just too impossible to be true.

"Well, I didn't mean for that to cause a round of awkward silence," Sirius said. He looked behind him. "Am I sitting in a sink of water?"

"Yes," Remus said.

Sirius jumped from the sink. His pockets were dripping water and the wet fabric was morphing itself very suggestively to his legs.

Remus brushed his hair. Stared straight ahead at his reflection and brushed his hair.

"Guess I can skip the shower now, huh Moony?"

Remus made a sound of assertion or wonderment. He couldn't be sure because the sound he made coincided with the sound of a zipper being pulled. The next sound was wet fabric smacking the floor.

"Sirius, can't you wait till I leave?" Please wait till I leave, please wait till I leave.

"But I was all wet." Remus watched Sirius's reflection step up behind him. He had taken his shirt off too which wasn't even slightly moist and therefore had no reason to be taken off at all. Remus tried not to look at Sirius's tight torso or the coarse black hair trailing down from his belly in a perfect straight line and concentrated on brushing his hair.

"You do realize," Sirius said. "That you've been brushing air for the past five minuets?"

"What?" Remus snapped into reality and realized that he was moving his brush in a brushing manner a good two feet away from anything resembling hair. He frowned and brought his hand down. He was sixteen. Sixteen and the object of his nightly, daily, mid-afternoon, morning, dawn, dusk, twilight, midnight wanks was standing behind him naked. Remus may be a werewolf, but he was also a human.

"Sirius?" Remus turned around to face his friend and it took everything he had in him to keep looking at Sirius's face. Sirius would never let him live it down if he was caught checking him out. "Is there a reason you're in here bothering me?"

Sirius's cocky façade collapsed and he nodded. "Yes, Remus, oh I forgot I'm calling you Moony now. Yes, Moony." Sirius took a deep breath. "There's something I need to ask you. Something I want you to do that boys don't usually or ever do with each other."

Remus instantly made up his mind that whatever Sirius asked him the answer would be yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

"Remember last night I had Quidditch practice? Well, it was really really windy out."

And the wind made you realize you want me, Remus's poor, wishful thinking imagination finished for him.

"I should have put my hair back, but I didn't. And now…" Sirius reached behind his head and dragged a large chunk of hair over his shoulder. "Now I've got this huge knot! And I can't get it out and I don't want to use magic because…it's my hair! And, well….I was hoping Remus, Moony, that you'd..." Sirius stepped up closer to Remus and whispered, "Brush it for me."

Once Remus remembered he wasn't living in a dream sequence and this was indeed reality, he started laughing. "Are you-?"

"Yes," Sirius shouted. "I'm serious. You're the only one, Remus. James and Peter don't understand the precise art of hair management like we do." Then, to Remus's horror, Sirius did the one thing Remus was never able to resist. He dipped his chin down so that his fringe fell like a sheath veil over his face. He made his eyes round and big and glistening. And then with an overextended bottom lip, he said, "Moony."

"Go get a chair or something," Remus said quickly, mostly to block out the voice in his head. Meanwhile, the voice in his head was trying to figure out what to say to make Sirius never tell James and Peter about Remus's new nickname and make it something special only Sirius called him because really, right then in Remus's life, Sirius was all that mattered. Remus found himself overwhelmed with the idea that maybe if Sirius owned his name, he would own Remus too. Not that it mattered though. Sirius already did own him.

Sirius with much glee and arm flailing galloped back into the dorm room and returned with one of the desk chairs. He placed it down in front of Remus.

Remus stared at Sirius who was bouncing in place. "Really?" he sighed. Sirius tilted his head to the side with questioning confusion. Remus pointed to the chair. "Sit," he said and laughed as Sirius immediately bounced himself into the seat. "Oh, wait. Up!" Remus, holding tightly to his towel, ran across the bathroom and grabbed another fresh, fluffy, Gryffindor red towel. "Here," he said, thrusting the towel at Sirius and looking up at the ceiling.

Sirius didn't even make an attempt to grab it. "What do I need this for?"

"Well, I don't…I don't see why you have to be…you're naked!"

"So?"

"So?" Remus finally brought his eyes down to look at Sirius. "So, I'm brushing your hair and you're sitting there naked! Doesn't that bother you? It's bothering me." Although, to be honest, it was bothering him for reasons he couldn't actually admit to.

Sirius put his hands on his very naked hips and sent Remus eyes that could only be defined as smoldering. "Moony," he said, low and husky. "Don't you like the way I look naked?"

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's why it's bothering me! What he said was, "Please just put the towel on? I don't have all day, Sirius. I have somewhere to be soon."

Sirius grunted and snatched the towel from Remus's hand, and sat back down.

"Thank you," Remus whispered. Remus picked up his hair brush and a girly trill of excitement ran down his spine when he thought about how his old dead hairs stuck in his brush were going to mix and mingle with Sirius's old dead hairs. Save it for your diary, Miss Lupin, he could hear James's voice say to him as he went to stand behind Sirius. "If I'm hurting you, please tell me to stop."

"Don't stop," Sirius tried to moan, but it came out as a barking laugh.

"Is everything a joke to you," Remus said, smacking Sirius on the shoulder with the back of the hairbrush.

"I'm sorry," Sirius laughed. "Stop blushing. I'm sorry, I forgot you're a delicate little flower."

Remus grabbed the top of Sirius's skull and roughly turned it back to face the mirror. "Where's the knot? Oh." The left side Sirius's hair was normal; shiny, so dark brown it could almost be black, a slight curl at the bottom but silky and arranged perfectly. The right side was one big triple knotted mess that Remus was deathly afraid might have to be cut off. "How did you do this?" Remus picked up the knot like an excavator surveying a new ancient find.

"The wind did it." Sirius sounded like he was two pushes away from crying.

Remus nodded, and set to work. He gently eased the brush over a smaller knot at the bottom, pulling as softly as he could to separate the tangled strands.

"Remus?"

"Hmm?"

"Where do you, ow, have to be soon? On a Saturday?"

Remus ducked down lower, now using his fingers to pull the knot apart. "I'm meeting Lily."

"Ow! Fuck! Evans?"

"Sorry." Remus managed, by pulling really hard, to separate the giant knot into two medium knots. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because we're friends. This might hurt." Remus ripped his fingers through Sirius's hair.

Sirius started whimpering. "Might," he mumbled. "It's not a date, is it? You're not secretly dating her, are you?"

Remus rolled his eyes and looked over Sirius's head and into the eyes of Sirius's reflection. "I rather enjoy living." James wouldn't let him breathe another molecule of air if he broke the sacred oath of Anyone Who Wanted To Be Called Friend By James Potter Will Restrain From Looking At Lily Evans In Any Way Conceived As Romantically That Means You Sirius Black.

"So you're not dating her, but that still, ow, doesn't, ow, explain why you'd rather, ouch, spend the day with her, owRemus, then with me."

Remus started quickly thinking about everything he would probably give up to spend the day with Sirius. The thought turning down one million Knuts came to mind, and so did the thought of giving up a cure which also meant he clearly wasn't thinking straight. After a while he said, "Lily and I have had this…meeting for lack of better word, planned since September. I can't back out of it." Remus was done untangling Sirius's hair, but he didn't want to stop touching it. His finger tips went under the dark locks, brushed against the nape of Sirius's neck and threaded into the long strands hair. As Remus brushed his fingers through Sirius's hair, the oily softness of it was something addicting. It was like running his fingers over flower petals. The feel was so different from his own more coarse hair. "You're all done," he whispered, watching his pale white fingers make four striking paths like shooting stars through a dark night sky.

"Thanks," Sirius whispered back. And Remus suddenly noticed that Sirius wasn't moving and hadn't said anything for the better part of three minutes, which was most definitely a record of some sort. Sirius was simply sitting in the chair, staring at Remus's reflection. Watching Remus watch his fingers move through his hair, which he probably felt him doing too. "Are you sure you have to go meet Evans?"

Remus nodded, meeting Sirius's eyes through their reflections and smiling. "But now with your unknotted hair, you can go tempt some lass to knot it back up for you."

"Hmm," Sirius said. He closed his eyes, leaning his head into Remus's fingers. The move was so reminiscent of a dog it made Remus laugh.

Remus's body wanted to sigh. His lungs kept reserving a pocket of air for just that purpose. He let it out slowly. "I have to go," he said.

Sirius tilted his head back and looked at him. "I know. Thank you. Moony."

Remus ruffled up the hair closer to Sirius's forehead. "You're welcome." Then he thought for a second and added, "Padfoot."

Sirius smiled like starlight and fiery suns. "I've never had a nickname," he said, standing up and turning to face Remus. "Well, actually, sometimes my mother calls me The Family Shame. That could almost be thought of as a nickname."

"In an awful twisted way," Remus added for him.

Sirius nodded. "I like Padfoot better. Moony?" Remus could just about touch the bubble of nervous energy pulsating from Sirius. Sirius's face was an odd cross between uncertainty and determination and it made Remus develop his own small nervous cocoon.

"Yes?"

Sirius moved closer, and in an uncharacteristic moment of self-consciousness hiked his towel up. "Moony, there's something I want to do, but I can't get myself to do it, so I'm going to do something else, can I hug you?"

Remus didn't answer. He kept walking forward until his still chest hit Sirius's and his arms had no other place to go but around the other boy's shoulders. Sirius's body melded against his own. They could have morphed into one person, and Remus wouldn't have realized it. Or cared.

The arms around his waist tightened. There were hot burst of air on his neck that caused equally hot bursts to erupt in his stomach. "I'm not going to tell James and Peter why I started calling you Moony," Sirius said into Remus's hair. "I'll let them think it's a clever reference to the wolf." He laughed. "I don't want them trying to catch you naked too."

Remus was trying so hard not to read anything into what Sirius was saying or had said all morning. He couldn't let himself believe that something was possible between himself and Sirius because that was ludicrous. Sirius was just affectionate; he repeated that over and over. But sometimes, especially then, with Sirius wrapped around his body, he wondered that maybe the odds weren't against him.

"Padfoot?" Remus whispered, testing out the new name. He felt Sirius nod against his face. "What did you want to do before?"

"I'm sorry," Sirius said, pulling back from him suddenly. "You're going to be late. Go meet Lily, er, Evans. Just, yeah, thanks again, really. You should go."

So, Remus went.

"I will completely forget the fact that you're late if you're excuse has nothing to do with your dormmates."

Remus bit his lip.

"I am ashamed to be your friend."

Most of the Hogwarts populace thought of Lily Evans as a beautiful girl. A flower, just like her name. And she was beautiful. But mostly she was beautiful in her head and her heart. That beauty made her glow from the outside. James (and he was severely teased and ridiculed after he said it) once compared her to the enchanted rose in the story The Beauty and the Beast they had to read for Muggle Studies. "Her presence demands your attention. She's sparkling and glistening like twilight and magic in her form and in her essence, her spirit." Remus laughed just as much as Sirius, but he also thought it was almost the truest statement probably ever said about Lily Evans. He agreed to an extent that she was a flower. A flower with a thorny stem and bees hiding in her leaves. She was beautiful but she wasn't even close to being dumb and delicate. She didn't take nothing from no one. She was a spit-fire. If she was a flower she'd spit fire. Which wasn't even possible, but Lily Evans would have figured out how to do it and would have had color coated fire reserved for different victims.

"Walk with me, Lupin."

Remus laughed. "This isn't a business meeting. You can relax."

"I am relaxed." Lily inhaled and exhaled in cool and calm slow motion to prove her point. "You, however, look like you're either going to puke or burst into tears." Lily tucked her bright red hair behind her ears and peered up at Remus.

Remus grabbed Lily's shoulders, choosing to ignore any prying into his own life. "In September's prefect's meeting, you asked me to meet you here, in front of the lake, on the first Saturday of May. Why?"

Lily took a deep breath. "Please don't hate me or think less of me but I gave myself an entire year to think about this and…" Lily took another deep inhale but this time it was real. "I'm in love with Potter."

"Are you now?"

"Yes." Lily stepped back from Remus so she could properly throw her arms around in aggravation. "And I don't even like him!"

"But you love him."

"Now you're getting it."

Remus laughed the laugh of a very tired and confused man. "No. I'm not."

Lily pushed him with her hip to get him to start walking. "It's like this. I can't stand him because I like him, and I shouldn't like him because he's a jerk, so actually, this whole time it's myself I can't stand because I do like him deep down and I've just been finding things to hate about him this whole time to cover up the fact that, yes, maybe, I kind of fancy him quite a bit, so really my grounds for hating him are invalid."

Remus stopped walking. "I'm going to pretend any of that made sense and just jump into my first question."

"I'm ready." Lily stepped up to him so that the toes of her shoes were completely parallel and in line with the toes of his shoes.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Remus watched Lily turn to look out over the lake, her hair streaming behind her like ribbons. "I'm scared."

"What?" Remus started shaking with laughter. He grabbed on to Lily's arms to keep himself up. "He's not going to turn you down."

"That's not…I'm scared he's going to act like he knew this day was coming and not be sweet and nice but loud and obnoxious and all I'm King of the Forest. Clearly, he's capable of both."

"Well." Remus really wanted to tell Lily that she was wrong and that James wouldn't get some ego boost from her confession, but he knew James was capable of both. Lily stared at him. Remus could see that she wanted him to sprout with wisdom and tell her what to do. Her green eyes were begging him to help her. Remus's mind wandered all over, trying to think of a perspective to take. Trying to think of something he could relate to Lily's problem. When he found it, the words poured from his mouth.

"Lily, I don't think it'll be wise to just go right up to James and ask him out, if that's what you were thinking of doing." Lily lowered her eyes, which meant yes. "You need to…you don't even like him, right? That's a problem. You don't like him because you don't know him. You know second hand stories and the face he puts on for everyone else. That's not even close to the real person he is."

"You're saying then…that I need to become friends with him first?"

Remus pushed his hair back. That was going to be his big, impressive piece of advice. His Oh Remus You Should Be Given Lots of Awards Because You're a Super Genius moment taken away like that. "Yes, yes, become friends, that's nice," he mumbled. Then he recovered because he wasn't finished. "Yes. You become friends with him. Good friends. Friends that talk to each other about everything. Like we do; me and you. Then one day you'll realize that you spend every day together and it's nice and you like it. Then you'll give up things to be with him, and you won't mind because if he's not there then what's the point anyway. And you'll become so close to him, that there could only be one possible place to go, and you'll really, really, want to go there."

"Then go there," said Lily.

"What?"

Lily crossed her arms in front of her and gave Remus a look that would make mothers run and hide. "You don't tell me everything, Remus. And you're not talking about me anymore."

Remus rocked back and forth on his heels. He had this conversation with himself for years now; it was strange to have to say it out loud. He probably didn't have to say anything; he could have pushed the conversation back to the subject of her and James and zipped up like he usually did. "What are the chances," he started, because if Lily was brave enough to admit something, then so was he. "What are the chances, honestly, of two gay Hogwarts students being sorted in to the same house, the same year, given beds five feet away from each other? Becoming best friends? What are the chances?"

"Astronomical," said Lily. "But, not impossible." Remus felt Lily's soft hands grab his face, and he put his own larger hands over hers. "I've spent a school year, Remus, watching your little maraudering group of friends. And I've noticed two things. One, James doesn't look or flirt with any other girl. Sometimes it seems like he does it unconsciously, ignores a girl who's trying to get his attention. Like even unconsciously, I'm James's world. And two, the sight of you simply talking to anyone that's not Sirius Black puts the biggest frown on Black's face. I think James knows it too because one time I saw him punch Black to get his attention back from watching you hand an assignment to McGonagall. That almost made me more ill than the revelation that I'm James's entire world. If Sirius Black is in love with anything else besides his own reflection, it's you. And if you haven't noticed that yet, you're not as smart as I give you credit for."

Emboldened by that speech, Remus brought his face down closer to Lily's and whispered, "Are you going to admit that James is your world too and end this whole ordeal?"

"Are you going to water the seed I just planted in your head and start one?"

They both nodded.

"Meeting adjourned then." Lily squeezed Remus's face and brought her hands down. "Speaking of seeds, bad seeds, we have been followed since we started talking."

Remus followed Lily's eyes around his left shoulder to a bush where he could clearly see two black heads peeking up from.

"Before we end their misery, Remus-" Lily pulled his face back to her. "Thank you. You didn't really help me, but, just talking to you makes me feel better sometimes."

Remus just told Lily that he was gay and that he more than fancied one of his friends. "I should be thanking you, really."

Lily shrugged and quickly kissed his cheek. "I know. And I'll pretend you did. Hello boys!"

Remus met James's eyes, tired to; they weren't really fixed on anything without red hair. "Lily! Fancy meeting you out here."

"Funny, huh?" Lily smiled, and sent teasing eyes towards Remus. "James, how about you and I walk to lunch and you can tell all about gardening. I assume that's what you were doing behind that bush?"

James stammered, but after a rough push from Sirius, followed Lily towards the castle.

"We were following you," said Sirius.

"Obviously."

"How was the meeting?"

"Interesting. How's the hair?" Remus didn't let Sirius answer because as soon as the question left Remus's mouth he grabbed Sirius's hand and pulled him back over to the bush. He was done with idle chit chat. There was a seed in his head and he was going to water it or dig it out.

The two kneeled down in the small hiding space. "Moony! What are you doing?"

"Gardening," said Remus. The he moved his head forward and kissed Sirius.

Sirius pulled back a tiny fraction and knotted his fingers into Remus's hair. "That's what I wanted to do before," he said and kissed Remus back.