Remus sat in an armchair in a corner of the Gryffindor common room and surveyed his feet.
His toe was sticking out of the end of his sock. It was terribly annoying, not only because it made him look like one of those tramps he'd seen in London, but also because it was somewhat uncomfortable.
He'd been ignoring the slow deterioration of his sock for a while, simply pulling the fabric around until he was happy that none of his toes would fall out, but now the sock was in such a state that even that didn't help and he had to face the truth.
He had a hole in his sock, and he was in love with Sirius.
The latter, Remus supposed, would not appear to an unbiased observer to have anything to do with the former, but Remus, who had been sitting pondering the latter for almost as long as his sock has been falling to bits ((hyperbole excused)), had come to see that perhaps his relationship with Sirius was a lot like his relationship with his sock.
For instance, Remus had been avoiding admitting that he had a hole in his sock, taking it for granted that his sock would always have a toe in it, and avoiding facing the issue at hand for as long as possible by rearranging it whenever it got too uncomfortable.
This, he supposed, was what he'd done with Sirius. He'd taken it for granted that Sirius would always be there, ready to mock James, or have silly conversations, or just generally be a nuisance, that now Sirius was avoiding him he found himself realizing just how much he liked having the toe of his sock.
Sirius was his sock-toe.
Oh God, he thought, and looked at his watch. It's late. I hate it when it's late and I'm introspective and why isn't Sirius back from detention yet?
He continued ranting mentally about introspection, socks and Sirius until he finally dozed off in his armchair.
-
It was past one when Sirius finally dragged himself through the portrait hole into the common room. He was exhausted. His feet throbbed, his back ached and his eyes burned. He was exhausted...Bloody Filch...Lifting and carrying and dusting and cleaning and now he just wanted to sleep...
He paused in the process of bringing a hand up to scrub over his eyes when he spotted Remus, slouched in a chair on the far side of the common room, asleep.
"Oh tsk," Sirius muttered to himself, a fond grin twisting his lips. "Honestly, you need to take better care of yourself mate."
He moved over to where Remus was sitting and crouched in front of them chair, peering up into Remus' sleeping face, the other boy's chin resting on his chest as he dozed.
"You're hopeless," Sirius murmured after a while, shaking his head affectionately. "And you're going to get a crick in your neck if you stay like that. What're you going to do when we leave here and I'm not around to make sure you look after yourself? We'll have to find you a girl-version of me, who you can fall in love and have lots of little Moonies with." He stood and moved to the side of the chair, trying best to judge how he could work his arms underneath Remus so as to lift him up. He supposed using his wand would be easier, but since Filch had confiscated it at the start of his detention, so as to assure that he wouldn't use magic to move the boxes, and wasn't planning on giving it back until breakfast tomorrow, Sirius was stuck with carrying Remus himself.
"Of course," he continued, working one arm carefully under Remus' legs and the other around his back, gently so as not to wake him. "She won't be quite as wonderful as I am, or as good-looking, and she won't love you as much as I do, but that's only to be expected because, quite frankly, no one can."
He grunted as he heaved Remus out of the chair, pausing as Remus shifted, but when the other boy didn't wake up, he shifted his weight and made his way towards the stairs.
"However, she will be a girl, and she will be pretty wonderful, and pretty good-looking and love you an awful lot anyway, and you will of course love her, because she will be just like me, only a girl and slightly less generally brilliant, but seeing as my amount of general brilliance seems to bother you, this won't be a problem."
Slowly he began to climb the stairs, mentally noting that he needed to start getting Remus to eat more – the boy shouldn't be this light when he was asleep!
"I'd offer to audition candidates for you, but I'm afraid I'd be slightly biased and probably end up stabbing a few of them with my quill. Plus, I'd never be able to pick anyone who I thought was good enough for you anyway." Sirius frowned as he contemplated the door in front of him. This could be tricky...
"I know it seems unfair, but since you don't want me you're just going to have to settle for second best. After all, you can't really get better than me. I should know – I am me."
After some rather impressive juggling – Sirius still didn't know quite how he'd done it – He was able to edge quietly into the dorm room, dropping his voice even lower as he padded across to Remus' bed.
"Besides, you don't need to worry about me. As long as you're being taken care of, I'll be fine. And hey, maybe they'll discover the secret of eternal youth and I'll be able to hit on one of your many mini-Moonies that you'll have with not-so-wonderful Girl-me."
Slowly and carefully, as though he was holding the most precious thing in the world, ((Which, not to get too sappy here because this sort of thing always made him feel nauseous, he sort of was)), he deposited Remus onto his bed and managed to wrestle his robes, tie and belt off so he'd be more comfortable.
Then Sirius stood for a moment beside Remus' bed, just taking in the other boy's features in the dim light. He smiled slightly, and one of his hands drifted towards Remus' face, freezing millimeters away when Remus gave a sniffle, then rolled over onto his side.
Carefully, Sirius reached down and disentangled Remus' hair tie from his hair, smoothing the tawny strands down as he did so, before pocketing the band and drawing the curtains on Remus' bed and heading towards his own.
Sleeeeeeeeppp...
-
Remus woke up and for a moment could not remember where he was.
Then, once he'd remembered that, he found he couldn't remember how on Earth he'd gotten there.
He presumed, of course, that if he'd walked up here himself and taken his tie, belt and robes off, not to mention lose his hair-tie in the process, then he would have been awake enough to remember it now. And he'd never in his life been accused of sleep walking.
Irritated that he couldn't work it out, he let the back of his mind gnaw on it while he recalled the very odd dream he'd had last night.
He had the suspicion he'd been wearing a wedding dress for most of it, and Sirius had been dressed like a Catholic Priest, carrying a bible and wearing little half-moon spectacles like Dumbledore's.
Sirius had been telling him that he had to marry a girl and have lots of Mini-Moonies, and Remus had spent most of the dream trying to tell him that he didn't want to marry a girl and he wouldn't be allowed to have mini-Moonies anyway, because of the laws the Ministry of Magic had with regards to that thing, but Sirius had just clouted him on the head with his bible and said
"Since you don't want me you're just going to have to settle for second best."
Then disappeared, leaving Remus terribly frustrated and wearing a wedding dress.
And there was something terribly frustrating about wedding dresses.
-
No-one was particularly sure who it was who had suggested a whole-house game of hide-and-seek, and not many particularly cared. All that mattered was that it brought about a circumstance which left Remus Lupin and Sirius Black in a cramped cubby-hole with less than an inch of space between the pair of them.
Sirius was good at hiding – most of his early life had been spent hiding from someone-or-other – his parents, his tutors, Regulus…
It wasn't until he had come to Hogwarts that he'd discovered hiding without the threat of danger and found that he quite enjoyed it – there was something thrilling about crouching or lying in the darkness somewhere while others, intent on finding him, searched everywhere except where he was ((it was like chase, but for lazy people, and Sirius did love chase, but he did also love being lazy)). It was surprising how small Sirius could make himself when he was determined to fit somewhere ((Often, 'hide and seek' became 'hide and hope Sirius gets bored within the next four hours or we'll be here all day')). As such, Hide and Seek wasn't played very often as the games were usually epic ((Blocky Tig had been abandoned after every attempt ended in a giant hex-war and detentions for everyone in the vicinity, because some of the full-blood wizards apparently hadn't been able to understand that it was against the rules to stupefy the person who you were racing to 'den'))
It went without saying among the Marauders that should a game of Hide-and-Seek break out, the invisibility cloak and map were not to be used, leaving three of the four marauders with a pretty similar handicap to the rest of the house and Sirius with a feeling of almost demonic glee as he fitted himself into cubbyholes that no human should have been able to fit in.
This particular game had shown signs of heading in the same direction, until Sirius had noticed that Remus, far from running off to hide like the rest of the house ((excluding the poor third year who had gotten the task of finding everyone)), was stubbornly sitting in his armchair and reading. All resolve to avoid Remus fled – he couldn't just leave the stupid git there. It went against every competitive bone in his body.
He heaved a world-weary sigh and seized Remus' wrist, dragging him out of the common room with all his strength.
"Hey!" Remus yelped, stumbling along the corridor after Sirius. "What're you doing?"
"None of the Marauders is going to lose this game because he can't be bothered to hide."
Before Remus could reply, Sirius spun on the spot and grabbed his shoulders, pulling him down a thin gap between two doors ((which, Sirius had long since discovered, was there for no apparent reason)), which wasn't much wider than it looked ((if anything, it felt thinner)), and he found himself pressed up against a wall with the sudden, dizzying feeling that Sirius was going to kiss him.
Sirius, despite thoughts that followed a rather similar thread, did not kiss Remus, resisting the urge with Herculean effort and instead settling for edging further down the cubby into the shadows, tugging Remus along with him.
The gap was about wide enough for him to stand with his back flat against the wall at the end and have his shoulders pressed tightly against the walls on either side of him. To fit two people in, they had to turn sideways, and there wasn't enough shadow at this time of day to allow them to stagger their standing to give them room in front of them. They had to stand smushed up against each other, heads turned so that they could breathe and suddenly feel very paranoid about their breath.
And that was how Remus Lupin and Sirius Black were to be found in a cramped space with less than an inch of space between the pair of them.
"Padfoot," Remus said after a space. "You're a raving madman."
"I know." Sirius flashed Remus a grin that he could just make out from the light that stopped a few inches shy of them.
"No, Pads, this isn't a good thing."
"It always has been before."
"Now, though, you're just a psycho."
Sirius chuckled, his head falling forwards slightly and Remus tensed as he felt the warm breath huff against the skin of his neck. Now, he thought, would not be a good time to get an erection. It would be an even worse time than the time in the bathroom.
Sirius agreed whole-heartedly with this fact, but even that couldn't stop him from resting his forehead on Remus' shoulder and taking the opportunity to fully appreciate how yummy he smelled. He'd missed this smell in the past fortnight. It was quite difficult to sleep unless he got his daily dose of Moony-smell before bed.
"Uh…Sirius…" Remus said after a pause, his voice shaking slightly.
"Sh," Sirius whispered. "Have to be quiet, or we'll get found."
Remus didn't answer, but he swallowed nervously and Sirius watched, fascinated, as his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat.
Remus kept very still, knowing that if he moved this whole situation could end very badly. For the first time in his life, he did not find himself amused by Sirius' hiding skills, but rather dreading the amount of time he would have to stand like this.
He could feel the heat radiating off Sirius' body.
"You're hot," he commented idly. Sirius chuckled and it vibrated through Remus.
"You finally noticed!" Sirius murmured. "I was wondering how long it would take you!"
"No, I mean, you're warm."
"I'm aware of that. That tends to happen when two people are squashed together in a small space." Remus felt a finger poke his side. "Relax, Moony. We're going to be here a while and you're going to get terribly uncomfortable if you spend the whole time standing like you've got a board taped to your back." As if to demonstrate, Sirius flopped against Remus more, and the other boy could feel his heartbeat through their robes.
Remus didn't reply, and a few moments later they heard footsteps and shrank further back in the shadows. Sirius grinned and shivered delightedly as he felt the thrill of the game run through him, mixed with the pleasure of being totally sprawled against Remus' front. A rare treat, that one.
He could see Remus looking down at him out of the corner of his eye and watched, breath catching slightly, as the other boy bit down on his lower lip, then glanced nervously up to then end of the cubby. His grin turned triumphant. Moony was worried about being found - he knew he'd get into the spirit of the game eventually!
The footsteps faded as quickly as they had approached and both of them seemed to relax even further. Remus gave into Sirius' advise and slid down the wall somewhat, so his legs were pushed against the wall opposite, Sirius' legs on either side of his own left one. They really were sandwiched very tightly together...
"You know," Sirius said conversationally. "If you hadn't been the scrawny thing you are, we'd have had to find somewhere else to hide."
"Dammit," Remus huffed, with a small grin. "I'll have to start eating more."
"Damn right," Sirius agreed. "You hardly weigh anything. Stupid git. And how you can bloody manage it when you eat like a horse is beyond me completely."
Something clicked at the back of Remus' mind and he tried to crane his neck to frown at Sirius. It didn't work very well, and his eyes hurt somewhat afterwards, but he asked his question anyway.
"Sirius, did you carry me up to bed the other night?"
"Yes." Sirius' response was muffled in his shoulder, where his face was buried. He followed this affirmative with the pronouncement, "I want to eat your shoulder."
"Please try and refrain from doing so," Remus said dryly, while the warm feeling he'd felt in the infirmary spread through his stomach again and a silly grin tried to claw its way onto his face. "I quite like my shoulder attached to me."
"Can I at least gnaw on it a little bit?"
"No."
"Spoilsport."
Sirius didn't know how long they'd been there. He only had a very tenuous grasp on the passage of time on a good day, but at the moment, pressed up against Remus as he was, he lost track of it completely.
He was pretty sure they'd been there for a while though - he was feeling the just-woken-up sensation spread through him and he was very comfortable and warm and not really eager to move at all - when Remus spoke up.
"I had a dream I was wearing a wedding dress the other night."
Sirius, who could unfortunately picture Remus in a wedding dress very clearly and had to shift himself slightly, didn't have a clue what sort of response Remus was looking for when he said that, but he felt tolerably certain it wasn't his own noise of acknowledgement, followed by,
"I had one of those the other year."
He felt Remus shift and he groaned slightly.
"You did?"
"Yeah," Sirius yawned. "Dreamt that I was wearing a wedding dress and talking to you on one of those muggle telephone thingies, even though you were in the room with me, and saying that I would marry you in two years if you made me fall in love with you by then."
"Really?" Remus' voice was somewhat shaky. "When did you have this?"
"Third year."
Remus laughed - it sounded a little flat.
"Guess I kinda missed my chance on that one then, hm?"
No you didn't, Sirius thought. You sodding git, you made me fall in love with you in less than two years and I've been pining after you since then and you haven't got the slightest clue.
"Yeah," Sirius replied. "Oh well. Since you can't have me, you'll have to settle for second best and marry some nice girl."
Remus started at that.
"S-second best?" he repeated.
Sirius nodded.
"Well, you can't get any better than me, can you?" He pulled back a little and flashed a grin at Remus. "So you'll have to marry some nice girl and have lots of mini-Moonies."
Remus stared at him, dumbstruck, for several moments. Eventually, he managed to gain control of his voice.
"Sirius, I-"
"AHA! FOUND YOU!"
Sirius and Remus' heads snapped around to stare at the triumphant figure at the mouth of the cubby.
"Well?" the third-year demanded, hands on her hips. "Are you coming out or not?"
They shared a look and shrugged, pulling as far away from each other as they could and edging back out into the corridor. The girl stared at them as they emerged into the light.
"Oh my god..." she breathed. "I don't believe it...I found...I found Sirius!"
"You did," Sirius said with a grin. "Well done!"
"I found Sirius!" she squealed, grinning delightedly, before turning and sprinting off down the corridor yelling "I FOUND SIRIUS!" at the top of her lungs.
"Guess you've lost your reputation," Remus said, smiling slightly at Sirius, who shrugged.
"Ah well. I'll just have to get myself another one then." He winked and then set off down the corridor towards the Gryffindor tower, Remus trailing behind as he realized that he'd been interrupted before he'd said what he wanted to Sirius.
-