A/N: I couldn't just leave it like that, so here's a second chapter. Lowkey debating writing a third, but it'll probably be a couple weeks before I start, if I do decide to.

xx

"I deserve that," Sirius says. "Stupid and selfish and lonely—that sums me up pretty accurately."

"I didn't mean you," says Remus, and is he really going there? "I haven't been honest with you, either."

"Don't tell me you're in love with Prongs, too," Sirius mutters.

Remus barks out a laugh. "No, but I'm…"

Meeting his eyes again, Sirius takes a second to piece anything together, then lets his mouth fall open and backs up a little. "No way. You're obviously fucking with me. There's no way you would have allowed me to feel as alone as I did when I came out if you've been gay the whole time, too."

Remus shrugs.

"So—what, this was your way of experimenting? Trying to confirm if you really are into dudes?"

So Sirius has only figured out half of the story. Remus breathes a sigh of relief. He feels a little guilty, not completely fessing up to his own ulterior motives when it's clearly taken Sirius a lot of courage to admit to Remus his own reasons for jumping into this "relationship," but—honestly, would it really be so much better for him to come clean? After all, Sirius has just admitted to using and misleading Remus on purpose: Remus would probably make him feel twice as bad if he informed Sirius that Remus has had real feelings for him all along.

"I shouldn't have lied," he tells Sirius, dodging the question as best as he can. "I know I shouldn't have lied about why I was doing it, and I'm sorry for that."

"It's cool. We'll call it even. Just—don't tell Prongs or Wormtail what I told you, okay? I don't think I could face it if Prongs found out and looked at me like I was…"

The thing is, when it comes to him, Remus knows it's a bad idea. Maybe he can get away with not telling the whole truth, but that doesn't mean he ought to be tempting fate. And yet—

"We don't have to tell them anything. But just because we're 'breaking up' doesn't mean we have to… break up."

"…I don't follow."

"You could still use somebody to help you get over Prongs, couldn't you? And it's not like there are any other gay blokes around to go for either of us. If we don't—keep doing anything, then we're both in a dry spell, and to add insult to the injury, you have to do it while watching Prongs and Evans fawn over each other all the time."

Sirius snorts. "I highly doubt that Evans is going to be 'fawning over' Prongs anytime soon."

"Yeah, but it's not the way she looks at him that's going to be an issue, is it?"

"So you want us to… make out?"

"Yeah."

"…In secret?"

"Do you fancy having to explain to Prongs and Wormtail why we haven't stopped 'dating?'"

He chews on this for a moment while Remus holds his breath. If Sirius somehow doesn't figure him out—if Remus actually manages to get him to agree—

—then what? If they do this, it's not like there's any way it can last—like there's any chance it won't end horribly. The longer Remus and Sirius stay attached (at the lips, literally), the harder it's going to be for Remus to let go when Sirius decides they're through. Sirius is going to decide, at some point, that they're through—and it's already harder to let go now than it was to stay away before all this happened, isn't it? If it weren't, Remus wouldn't be suggesting they prolong their arrangement, knowing full well how it's going to go down.

"If we do this," says Sirius, and Remus's heart races, "then how…? We're always with Wormy and Prongs, and even when we're not, we're never anywhere truly private. We share the dormitory with them; we'd get caught in a second if we made a habit of messing around in here."

It's not like James and Peter are always in the dormitory when Remus and Sirius are—take right now, for example—but Sirius is right: locking the door isn't going to be enough to guarantee their privacy, not when Peter and James can Alohomora it open without a clue what they're about to walk in on. "I'd suggest the prefects' bathroom, but it's not exactly anywhere discreet—anybody could see us going in or coming out together, and if we borrowed the Invisibility Cloak so we could get out of there, Prongs would want to know why."

"And even if we found some remote broom cupboard away from everybody, they'd be able to see us on the Map and wonder what we were getting up to."

That one stumps Remus for a moment. "We'll have to—come up with an excuse. Something else we're doing when what we're really doing is…"

"Studying for N.E.W.T.s?" Sirius suggests. "We can tell them I'm going to flunk, I dunno, Ancient Runes if you don't help me."

"Dude, you got an E on your Ancient Runes O.W.L."

"Yeah, but I'll tell them it's only because I cheated off of you in the written portion."

Raising his eyebrows, Remus asks, "Did you cheat off of me in the written portion of our Ancient Runes O.W.L.?"

"What? No, I didn't. The one I cheated off you in was History of Magic, but considering we both dropped the class in sixth year, I can't very well use that one as my excuse, can I?"

"I can't believe you cheated off me in our History of Magic O.W.L. and you didn't even tell me until now."

"Moony, I cheated off you in every exam I ever took for that class, but that's beside the point. If we tell them you're helping me with Runes, we can just lock ourselves in an empty classroom every night we do this, right? I suppose people could try the door and Alohomora their way in if they heard us, but—we can be quiet. As long as we don't, like…"

Remus has a sudden mental image of McGonagall walking in on himself and Sirius shagging with their robes half off on top of a desk that's thudding rhythmically against the chalkboard behind it.

"Shame they both know that I'm acing Defense Against the Dark Arts," says Sirius casually. "Dueling practice would make untidy appearances so much easier to explain."

Remus coughs.

xx

It's not like he's never kissed Sirius before, and it's not even like he's never snogged Sirius alone before—they crossed that particular line when Sirius gave him lessons and a do-over for their horrifically awkward first kiss on the lake, weeks before that one time in the bathroom in The Three Broomsticks, months before they made out in Remus's bed while James and Peter were sleeping just meters away. But Remus has definitely never locked himself with Sirius in an empty classroom with the express knowledge and intent that they're going to spend the next hour of their lives snogging, and he's so nervous that he thinks he might actually be sick—all over Sirius's face, if his worst nightmares are realized.

"Moony?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Why wouldn't I be sure?"

"Because you're dead-fishing again, and I'm pretty sure you only do that when you're too anxious to relax."

Remus ducks his head, partly in embarrassment, partly just to get away from the intensity of Sirius's gaze. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize. Just… hey."

Sirius puts his fingertips underneath Remus's chin and tilts it up until their faces are level again, their noses brushing. Still, Remus keeps his eyes cast down, away from Sirius's.

"If you're not into it anymore—"

"It's not that," says Remus.

"Then what?"

He finally looks up, and Sirius's eyes are big and round; there are creases in his forehead, and the inner ends of his eyebrows are angled upward. "When we were just helping James, it only mattered if it looked convincing. I didn't have to… perform."

"Dude, all we were doing before was performing."

"Yeah, but I just—can't get past feeling like, now, I have to prove that I can be… good at it. Before, I didn't have to make you like it, but now?"

"Okay—you're mental, but okay—but I wouldn't be here right now if I didn't already like making out with you, would I? Consider your goodness already proven. This is supposed to be the fun part: no expectations, just—what feels nice."

But there are expectations—ones Remus is placing on himself, at least—because if he doesn't measure up, Sirius is going to get bored, and he's going to throw Remus away. Remus doesn't have a lot of time to show Sirius why he should pick Remus, and—

—is that why Remus is doing this? He's treating it like some kind of audition, one he's going to fail if he doesn't convince Sirius to go for him instead of James?

Besides, if Sirius likes kissing Remus, then why doesn't he like Remus? Is Sirius really so good at compartmentalizing that he can have one but not the other—and does he really think that Remus is doing the same thing?

Sirius is still looking at him like Remus is a wounded bird, and Remus suddenly realizes that he can't take it anymore. He's never going to seduce Sirius if Sirius thinks he's this fragile, and if he doesn't figure out how to let go and live a little, he's going to let every precious second of this pass him by and find himself wondering why he wasted all of his time.

"Rem—"

But Sirius doesn't get to finish his thought before Remus dives in and crushes their mouths together. They're standing in the corner of the room, far along the wall from the door, and Remus swears into Sirius's mouth as he makes a ruckus knocking Sirius backwards into the book cupboard; Sirius's back slams against one cupboard door, rattling it—but Sirius just chuckles and kisses back eagerly. When he winds his hands into Remus's hair and pulls on the short strands, Remus groans.

"We were—going to—be quiet," Sirius reminds him in between kisses.

Remus swears again, even louder this time. Sirius breaks the kiss so he can laugh at him, a full belly laugh, but when Remus starts to suck on Sirius's neck and grind their bodies together, Sirius swiftly interrupts himself with a long moan.

Honestly, it's a miracle that nobody hears them for the whole hour and a half (longer than they'd planned) that they're in there that night, or the next night, or the four after that. On the seventh night, twenty minutes in, they're snogging on top of one of the desks, Sirius's legs dangling off the edge while Remus stands in between them, his hands on Sirius's arse. "God," Sirius groans when Remus moves down to his neck, and he puts his hands behind him and leans backward with his head thrown back, as if to relish it a little more—but something goes wrong; Remus isn't expecting it, and he topples forward a little, and the next thing he knows, they're both on the ground. The chairs they knock into bang into the next desk over, causing a resounding crash.

Sirius bursts out laughing, while Remus smacks him in the chest. "You idiot, if anybody's in the corridor right now—"

"Relax, Moony. Nobody's in the corridor."

They're lying awkwardly on the floor; Remus's calves are jammed in between both of Sirius's, and he's got a crick in his neck from the angle at which Sirius's left arm is stuck underneath it. Sirius's ear is flat to the ground, but Remus's head is uncomfortably balanced on top of Sirius's arm, a centimeter or two off of the floor. He's got a close-up view of Sirius's neck, where a bruise is starting to bloom. "I gave you a hickey," he snorts. "Remind me to cover that up with a Glamour Charm for you before we go back tonight."

"Get over here," says Sirius. He puts his right hand on Remus's exposed left cheek, contorts the arm underneath Remus so that his left hand is clapping Remus's back, and pulls Remus down for a kiss.

But they're not at this for long before the door to the classroom swings open. The doorknob must have rattled at first before the person on the other side unlocked it, but Remus and Sirius are clearly too distracted to have noticed. "Lumos," says a horribly familiar voice.

They break apart and fly upright to find Lily Evans frowning at them with her wand in one hand and the other on her hip. "You're—not supposed to be in any of the classrooms after class hours end."

"That's the best you can come up with?" snorts Sirius. "Out of all the things wrong with this picture, that's the one you pick out?"

The muscles in her forehead are working. "I thought James said you two were never really dating."

"We weren't," says Remus. "I mean, we aren't."

Evans raises her eyebrows.

Sirius adds, "Okay, yeah, we're—but it's just a bit of snogging. It doesn't mean anything."

Remus closes his eyes.

"Just—get out of here. Go. I'll let you off with a warning this time, but you should know better. You're a prefect, Remus, for heaven's sake."

"You can't tell anyone," says Remus with a note of desperation in his voice. "Especially Pete and James. If they find out—"

"I'll keep your secret," she says, rolling her eyes emphatically, "but you need to find somewhere allowed where you can—"

"Like where?" prompts Sirius. "All the bathrooms are communal. Broom cupboards and the kitchens wouldn't be allowed, either. The grounds aren't private. We can't exactly tell James and Peter why we need the dormitory all to ourselves for two hours every night—"

"You snog for two hours every night?"

"Well, how long do you and James snog for, when you do it? Where do you do it, anyway?"

"I—that's none of your bloody business."

"What, haven't you snogged him yet? From what all the girls say, if you ever had, you'd know how people can spend two hours doing it, and you'd realize that you have to break a few rules if you want to—"

"Okay, I don't need to hear this," says Evans, putting up a hand. "If you insist on breaking the rules, I can't stop you, but next time I'm docking points."

Sirius meets Remus's eyes with a smirk. "I guess we'll just have to get better at being quiet, then, won't we, Remus? Challenge accepted, Evans. Challenge accepted."

Remus is incredibly grateful that neither Sirius nor Evans can see the chill that goes down his spine.

xx

Keeping quiet ends up being a hell of a lot sexier than Remus ever would have expected. The next night—in a classroom on the sixth floor this time, just to change it up in case Evans checks back for them in their previous spot—Sirius has way too much fun doing increasingly dirty things to Remus all while daring him low in his ear not to make a sound if he doesn't want Sirius to stop. It's almost enough to make him think that Sirius—

But Sirius has made it perfectly clear what his intentions are, and seducing Remus isn't anywhere on the list. They haven't talked about Sirius's feelings for James since the night he admitted them to Remus, but—if he were over James, he'd have ended their arrangement already, and if he'd developed any feelings for Remus, Remus would know about them by now. Wouldn't he?

"Is Ancient Runes really all you two are doing when you go off together every night?" Peter remarks one Wednesday night when they've just burst back into the dormitory. Remus doesn't register James's words at first—the spiral staircase had been otherwise deserted, and before pushing open the door, Sirius had grabbed Remus by the front of his robes and dragged him in for a quick and thorough kiss. Remus's lips are still tingling. Remus's everything is still tingling.

"What else would we be doing?" says Sirius. His tone is totally nonchalant, but the pitch of his voice is just a little huskier and throatier than usual, and Remus thinks he's going to die if this keeps up.

Remus needs this to keep up.

"I dunno," Peter shrugs, "but two hours a night? Come on. No one is that bad at Ancient Runes."

"You'd be surprised," says Remus, working very hard to keep his voice casual and under control. "He's got the biggest mental block I've ever seen anybody have in this class, and that's including the shit Lockhart comes out with in lessons."

"Come on," says James, smirking. "You two expect me to believe Padfoot's on the verge of flunking after surviving four years of exams and an E on his O.W.L.?"

"I told you already, I cheated off Moony in the written."

"If you cheated off him in the written O.W.L., why can't you cheat off him in the written N.E.W.T.?"

Remus shoots Sirius a panicked look, but Sirius improvises, "Because he found out and wouldn't stand for it. Believe me, I'd have had no qualms about copying off him again, but he says I'm not allowed to sit behind him anymore."

Peter, at least, seems to accept this, but James keeps bringing it up over the next few days, making little comments and asking for specifics of what they've studied every time they return to the dormitory at night. "Dude, lay off," Sirius finally bursts on Sunday. "I don't know what story you've concocted in that fat head of yours, but—"

"Padfoot, is that a hickey?" James interrupts. "What are you getting up to that's got you trying to hide hickeys from us?"

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The Glamour Charm covering up Sirius's hickey must have worn off in the last couple of minutes. Sure enough, when Remus tilts his head and peers at Sirius's neck, the bruise is bright green and growing more opaque by the second. "What? No. I—"

"It's okay, Padfoot," says Remus on a whim, and is he really going to do this? It seems so. Sirius flashes him a danger look, but Remus continues, "You caught us, okay? We're, um… we haven't stopped. When we started fooling around to help you, we never stopped."

James's eyebrows have disappeared under his hairline, while Peter says, "'Fooling around?' I thought—we thought that was just for show. You're telling us you've been snogging in private? Like, for reasons that have nothing to do with helping Prongs?"

"Remus," Sirius hisses, "what are you—? We agreed—"

"It's my fault," says Remus. "I—I was taking advantage of him when I offered to fake date him, and after you and Evans got together, I asked if we could keep going. I, uh… I've been using Padfoot to figure myself out."

"But—" says James, who appears to be at a total loss for words. "But—Padfoot is the gay one."

Remus shakes his head. "It's not just him. I just—I wanted to know for sure if I was really gay, so I… you can't tell anyone, okay? I'm not—ready for people to know."

"You sure that's necessary?" says Peter, while James just whistles. "I mean—the whole castle already thinks you two have been shagging."

Now that it's clear Remus isn't going to rat out Sirius's feelings for James, Sirius's face and shoulders are starting to relax—but Remus isn't off the hook yet. He doesn't get Sirius alone again until the next night; Remus is about to break out the old Ancient Runes excuse when James says with a hint of nervousness in his voice, "So, uh, it's about time for your daily snog, isn't it? Wormy and I won't wait up."

Remus feels a rather large amount of shame as he grabs his schoolbag and follows Sirius out the door. They walk the corridors in silence; there aren't many people around outside of the common rooms, but Remus still doesn't want to say a damn word that anybody could overhear. When they finally lock themselves into an empty classroom, his heart is beating double time.

"You didn't have to do that, you know," says Sirius faintly.

"What?"

"What you said yesterday. Covering for me—making them think this is for you. You didn't have to."

Remus shrugs. To be honest, he's still not sure what possessed him to come out as gay, if not as being in love with Sirius, to Peter and James. But—the rest of the school didn't freak out when they thought Remus was gay, and if he can trust anyone, it's James and Peter, isn't it? Besides, something close to the truth was bound to come out sooner or later: at least this way Remus can control the narrative.

He feels like he should be feeling something more than this after admitting to two of his best friends in the world that he's not as straight as he's always passed himself off—but really, he's just relieved that they haven't put all the pieces together. The longer he keeps this up—keeps it hidden—the longer he gets to have what he craves. The longer Sirius believes this has nothing to do with him personally…

xx

Well, Remus reflects when Davy Gudgeon walks in on him and Sirius in a very compromising position, it was bound to happen eventually. It's not like they've been doing a good job of remaining inconspicuous, between how loud they can get and how long and often they go at it. He shouldn't even be upset—as far as the whole school knows, he and Sirius have already dated before, so them thinking that they're dating again is really just old hat.

"We should talk about how we're going to deal with this," Remus says after Gudgeon leaves the classroom and locks the door behind him. "We should…"

"Since when?"

"Padfoot—"

"No, for real. Everybody has known for years that I'm gay. Everybody has thought for months that you're gay, and you are, and you're not even hiding it from Prongs or Wormtail anymore. Everybody already knows—or thinks they already know—that we've dated before, so it's not like we've got reputations we're trying to protect. Who says we can't just—roll with it?"

Remus blinks at him. "Roll with it?"

"You know—let them think what they want. What's the harm? The only thing it's going to change is that I'll be able to do this in public from now on," says Sirius, grabbing Remus's arse and pulling Remus against his hips.

Remus jerks away. "It matters. It just—matters."

Sirius is offering up on a silver platter everything Remus has been wanting—a public relationship, one they don't have to hide; the chance to tell the whole world that Sirius is his boyfriend—and yet, suddenly, it's not what Remus wants anymore. These last few months with Sirius have been so, so close to a real relationship, but he knows Sirius doesn't love him, and Sirius knows he doesn't love him, and Remus—

—Can't keep torturing himself with being close enough. He needs something more. He needs anything more. He—

"And why does it matter again? Whether or not people know we're messing around—"

"It matters because I lied to you. It matters because I love you. I love you, Sirius."

Sirius's eyebrows furrow comically, and Remus—doesn't need to hear what he has to say. Never mind that Remus needs everything: he doesn't need anything.

He tries to get up, but Sirius flips them so that he's on top, pinning Remus to the hard ground. "Wait up. Just—hold on. You let me torture myself with guilt for using you for my own ends all those months when this whole time—?"

"Sirius—"

But he doesn't get to finish his thought before Sirius is kissing him brusquely. Remus allows himself to just—drown in it for a moment before he wrenches his face away. "But—you don't love me."

"No."

Remus's heart sinks. "And—you know now that I—"

"Yes."

"And you're still going to…?"

There's a wild, manic look in Sirius's eyes when he rasps, "Who the hell else is going to love me?"

And Remus—

—hates himself, but not enough to stop himself from diving back in.