What? It didn't take me months to update? Oh God, the sky might be falling!
Anyway, only one chapter to go, so this is starting to feel like closure. Oh so sad. Thank you for all the lovely reviews, you guys make my day. :))
Afterglow
By: Nekare
Remus is awoken with a kiss, and even when he has never been too fond of fairy tales and their red blood hooded girls he thinks he somehow understands their magic now, morning breath passing back and forth from uncaring lips stained too red and too warm. Sirius mumbles sleepily into his mouth, and Remus remains with half of him being lost among a land of curvy branches and color tainted words with wings, dreamy delight; and another becoming lost in the pure essence that makes Sirius himself, too dark hair and too light eyes, softness in his hands and harsh sounds on his voice.
He lets himself be kissed, and when he opens his eyes Sirius eyelashes shine softly in the light filtering from the curtains, stone on their backs and pains on their bones from the awkward position. "Hey," mutters Sirius, and Remus finally realizes James and Peter are back to their own beds, probably confused about the them that's being born between him and Sirius.
"Hey back," he whispers, lips still brushing and air tingling. His eyes are half-lidded, and Sirius smiles at him lazily, hands worming inside Remus' worn blue jumper.
There's happiness at the end of Remus' stomach, the kind Remus had thought he'd never feel again.
---
The pull of that day's moon starts feeling on Remus' bones as classes begin, and the never ending melody of learning coming from Professor McGonagall's figure sounds like nails on a blackboard (in a sadistic kind of tune) to his ears, as his senses go on an overload, heart beating far faster than usual and eyes wide as the colors brighten until they hurt, preparing to shut down and remain black and white for his canine vision for the night.
(Black and white like the other night, a touch of red and green posing as death).
With the scratching of quills against parchment spelling anguish on his brain, he tries paying attention, but not even the thought that since January the Second (the day etched in his brain forever) he hasn't thought of homework once can make his mind settle. There's twenty-one kids in his class, twenty-one scents that tickle at his nose and Sirius' effortlessly worn after-shave (not at all like James' stinking cologne) drifts up his nostrils with a mind of its own, spreading colorless fumes behind his eyelids and making his mouth water.
He is trembling, as always before the moon, pale, and sickly, and to top it all, horny. His eyes keep closing on their own, a shutting screen of wanted oblivion from the pain in his joints, burning and numbing at his skin.
"You'll be in trouble if you go to sleep, Moony," says Peter from his right, thinking ahead as usual, and Remus nods and shakes his head to get the drowsiness out of his system. It doesn't work, though, and his head falls a bit forward again, eyes slipping close.
Then there's a hand on his thigh, and the gasp that comes from him makes several heads turn. Remus smiles edgily and sits straight, looking stiff and uncomfortable all of the sudden. There's sweat on his forehead, and his skin goes a lovely shade of red all over his body.
"Relax," Sirius breaths into his ear, and Remus shivers. The hand stays in there, warm and real, for the rest of the class, and Remus' thought are snowed in and left behind, forgotten.
---
Lily hugs him that night, silent and understanding, and Remus can almost feel his heart break.
---
Apparently, James and Peter have joined in a conspiracy against Remus. He's been naked with the boys thousands of times before, but he feels unsure and scared for the first time in ages as he starts getting undressed in the Shack, shedding his clothes as a snake skin, painfully slow, taking minutes with every single button.
Sirius is watching him from the bed.
The intensity of the gray gaze makes him nervous, self-conscious of his scarred body as his toes curl on themselves with the promise of dawns spent together, mouth dry. Sirius just looks, trying desperately to control his breathing, and Remus is far too tired to feel that feverish. "What are we doing?" he says when he can't handle the silence anymore, and he wants to hit himself at his own stupidity.
There's some blinking from Sirius part, and Remus shuts his eyes in a grimace. "Uh, we're waiting for you to change?"
"No. I mean, us." The question has plagued Remus so much, and yet he doesn't know if he wants an answer. They avoid each other's eyes, and both of them shift uncomfortable.
The pain starts in Remus' middle, and he doubles up a little, hand against his mouth as bile goes up to his mouth. Sirius is there in a second, touching his shoulders as he always had before. It's been three months since the night in which Snape almost died, and Sirius' touch feels a bit like heaven on earth at that moment, a craving he hadn't allowed himself and that suddenly surrounds him from every angle, dripping comfort into his very pores. He holds to Sirius' shirt, and for once, trusts him to stay in the room while the change happens.
He takes off the rest of the clothes quickly, the pain making him forget anything else that isn't Sirius' face buried in his neck, murmuring lost words of encourage that are just blown away by the breeze. His blunt fingernails dig into Sirius' skin, bunching his white shirt and creasing it with the full moon-made folds of years of suffering and yearning, and wanting and living; the creases he doesn't carry in his face but in his entrails.
"Because I fancy you rotten, you git, because I might even love you. That's, why I'm doing this." The whisper digs through layers of epidermal tissue and half-awake neurons, and Remus takes a deep breath. "Why are you?" Sirius mutters, and the skin under Remus' fingers turns into dark fur, leaving him with questions for company.
Remus screams, and his human mind gives way to the animalistic vision of the wolf.
---
There's frozen grass under his paws, a gray spot in the eternity of whites, snow until the edge of his vision. He growls to his make-shift pack, and the three animals try to keep up with the grace in every single one of the majestic wolf's movements.
The wolf bumps noses with the rat, and signals him to climb on top of the stag, caring for the weakest before anything else. The stag lowers his head on recognition, and the wolf barks his approval.
The dog smells sweet on his nose, thick warmth and silent submission, exposing his throat as an offering, up for grabs, and the wolf nips at it slowly, languidly even, and he can feel the dog biting back the rumble in the back of his throat that would mark his pleasure. The wolf fights for it until he gets it.
Then there's only open spaces and time to howl. His fur gets coated in fresh snow, tiny droplets melting already; and the wolf doesn't think of anything else.