"You'll be late for breakfast if you don't get your arse out of bed in the next two minutes, Black."
James. The name swam to the surface of Sirius's sluggish mind. He forced his puffy eyes open, wincing as the cold morning light stuck pins in his brain.
"You know what will happen if you skip chapel again." A dark face with messy black hair and bespectacled hazel eyes swam into view above him. "You look like shit, mate. What happened to your mouth?"
Sirius opened the mouth in question to reply, but no sound emerged. He swallowed painfully, throat swollen almost shut. Licking dry lips, he grimaced as his tongue prodded the split in the lower one.
"Just - chapped," he wheezed.
Two paler figures joined James at his bedside. The looks on their faces made Sirius feel like a rather dubious cut of meat. He sat up, and immediately winced again as his head gave a painful throb.
"Are you OK?" asked Peter.
"You can't be hung over," said James. "You didn't have that much to drink last night."
"I think he's ill." Guilt lurked beneath Remus's look of concern.
Sirius tried to speak again, then made a face, turning to swing his legs out of bed. He reached for his clothes, but staggered as his head spun disconcertingly. James caught him.
"Easy there, mate. Maybe we ought to let Pomfrey have a look at you."
"M'OK," objected Sirius in a harsh whisper. It was a lie. His whole body felt achy and shivery and his skin prickled unpleasantly all over.
"The hell you are." James rolled his eyes. "This is what happens when some people leave the window open all night."
Remus turned away, mouth tight.
"S'nothing. M'fine," Sirius rasped, but his argument carried as little weight as his legs, and he leaned heavily on his best friend's arm.
"We're going to miss breakfast." Sirius was not certain if the concern in Peter's voice was for him or for the thought of a missed meal.
James sighed. "You two go ahead; I'll see this lump to the matron."
"I can -" began Remus.
"No, it's fine," said James. He grabbed Sirius's wool coat from the peg by the bed and shoved it into his hands. "Here. Put this on. If you snuff it on the way to the infirmary, I'm not carrying you."
Sirius stumbled along the path, shivering in the chilly morning air, James's iron grip on his arm keeping him upright and moving.
"Why don't you tell him to shut the sodding window?" he asked irritably. "Are you so desperate for a shag that you'd rather freeze your tits off than tell him to stuff it?"
"S'not like that," Sirius mumbled.
"Sure it isn't," scoffed James. "You're telling me you wouldn't be flat on your back if he looked at you twice? Or on all fours? However it is you lot do it." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Get over it. It's not going to happen."
"I know," wheezed Sirius, feeling miserable in more ways than one.
He felt too ill to complain much as Madam Pomfrey tucked him into the lumpy infirmary bed and James departed to grab a quick breakfast before chapel. The room was warm, at the very least, and Pomfrey supplied him with a hot water bottle for his feet, as well as a steady stream of tea with honey and lemon. Sirius tried to sleep for a while, but failed, which left him nothing to do but think.
The previous night's conversation with Remus ran through his mind in an unending loop. He did not want to think about it, but his woozy brain kept bringing him back to it. The shadowy figure of the man who had kidnapped Remus took on a hulking, brutish aspect in his mind, and it was all too easy to imagine Remus, six years old, weeping for his parents and his stolen innocence. Would Sirius ever be able to look at him again without thinking about what had happened to him? He desperately hoped so. Sirius would not want people thinking of Regulus every time they looked at him. Little wonder that Remus had been reluctant to tell.
Sirius closed his eyes and thought of Remus, pushing away the memory of their conversation as if it had been only another bad dream. Instead, he imagined Remus as he was now: sixteen and gangly, honey-brown hair falling into wary brown eyes, the long straight nose, the full curve of a mouth only rarely visited by laughter -
With a huff of annoyance, Sirius turned over, shaking off the image as guilt poked at him. He should not be thinking of Remus like that, either. That ripe, full mouth was triply off limits now: Remus was straight, and he was a roommate, and he had already suffered more than enough unwanted attention for one lifetime. Sirius had no right to think such things about him.
He's a friend, he told himself irritably. Not like James, but he could be someday if you'd just stop thinking stupid thoughts about him.
But with nothing else to occupy him, his treacherous brain kept drifting back to his quiet roommate throughout the afternoon: Remus's open collar at the previous night's social. Remus blowing the stray hairs off the back of his neck after his haircut. Remus with a joint in his hand, grinning mischievously. Remus's mouth against his own, long-fingered hands twining in Sirius's hair as their bodies pressed urgently together ...
Fortunately, he was too ill to entertain the last thought to its conclusion, and he was somewhat relieved - though more disappointed than he cared to admit - when Remus did not accompany James and Peter to visit him that evening after supper. His friends had brought playing cards, and they played a few hands of Rummy, which James won, Sirius being ill and distracted, and Peter having no great skill at cards.
It was only when his friends departed and Pomfrey returned that he remembered Remus's nightly appointments with the matron. Of course Remus had stayed away while James and Peter visited the infirmary; it would have been difficult for him to come up with a credible reason for hanging back after the others left. Sirius watched the matron take down a bottle of pills and shake two into a small paper cup. When he heard footsteps approaching in the corridor outside, he briefly considered feigning sleep, but Remus would know that the others had only just left him.
The brown-haired boy gave him one brief, furtive look before dropping his eyes guiltily to his feet. "Hey," he mumbled.
"Hey," croaked Sirius, unable to think of anything intelligent to add.
Are you sorry you told me? he wanted to ask, but with Pomfrey standing there, narrowly watching Remus pretend to take his medication, he could not.
Sirius was just opening his mouth, still unsure what he planned to say, when Remus turned away and walked quickly out of the infirmary, with no more than a hasty "g'night" as the door swung shut behind him.
Sirius settled back on the lumpy pillow, feeling more miserable than ever.
That night, he dreamed. The visions did not have the usual lucidity of his nightmares, but were instead a dark, confused jumble of images of the kind that so often accompany illness and fever. Regulus was there, but sometimes Sirius caught a glimpse of Remus in his face. Instead of challenging Sirius to a race up the beach cliffs, he told him they were going to Guernsey. A threatening presence lurked somewhere just out of sight, and Sirius kept trying to manoeuvre himself between it and Regulus/Remus. He woke in the predawn darkness and could not get back to sleep.
By morning, Sirius had developed a deep cough that tore at his chest and shook his entire body every time it gripped him. His head was painfully congested, and even under the blankets in the stifling room, he shivered. The only bright side to his deteriorated condition was that the matron dosed him heavily with her special blend of cough syrup, which was legendary among the students of St Godric's, and was widely rumoured to contain some form of opiate in addition to a high percentage of alcohol. Sirius dozed for a few hours in the morning, and spent the afternoon drifting just on the surface of consciousness, unable to think or feel very much.
Late afternoon light slanted through the infirmary window when chair legs scraped the floor beside Sirius's bed. Very slowly, he turned his head to regard the visitor.
"Oh, s'you." A wide smile blossomed across his face.
The corner of Remus's mouth twitched. "Feeling better?"
Sirius thought for a moment. Or tried to. "Yes?"
"You look like hell," said Remus. Then dropped his voice to add, "Been sleeping all right?"
Sirius's head wobbled back and forth in response, setting his brain crashing around in his skull. He winced.
"I thought not," frowned Remus. "I've brought copies of all my notes from today's lessons, but you don't look in any fit state for them."
Sirius blinked at him. "Din't hafta do that."
"It's my fault you froze your arse off," said Remus, looking uncomfortable. "Sorry."
"Don' be daft," Sirius smiled. It was easy to smile when he was looking at Remus. Slowly, he raised a hand that felt like it weighed four stone, and let it fall onto Remus's knee, patting heavily.
Remus looked startled for a moment, then laid his own hand over it, squeezing Sirius's fingers. "You should get some more rest."
Sirius frowned, turning his hand over to clutch weakly at Remus's fingers. "Don' go."
Remus squeezed his hand again, then moved it back to the bed beside him, letting go. "Save your strength. Potter and Pettigrew will be along after supper again. I think they've missed you. Potter got himself two detentions today, and Pettigrew had to do about fifty lines for McGonagall."
"D'you miss me?" Sirius asked sleepily.
The corner of Remus's mouth curled up again ever so slightly. "Maybe a bit. Get some rest. I'll be back later."
Sirius was already half asleep, so he probably imagined the light brush of fingers against his cheek. He was completely unconscious by the time the door closed softly behind Remus.
Sirius spent two further days in the infirmary, his increasing boredom and irritability signaling to anyone who got too close that he was on the mend. On Wednesday night, he was finally allowed to return to the dormitories and the relative comfort of his own bed. The cough persisted for a few days more, but on the whole, Sirius was glad to be back on his feet and getting on with things.
He was not, however, any closer to getting over things. Remus still occupied a large percentage of his thoughts, and even though he tried getting out and spending more time with James, which resulted in a couple of detentions, his mind inevitably drifted back to the quiet boy. He was drawn to him like the needle of a compass, and it seemed there was nothing he could do about it, anymore than he could confess his feelings to Remus.
Despite Sirius's attempts to put some distance between them, fate conspired to give him and Remus more time alone together. Peter's choir rehearsals were rescheduled so that they coincided with James's rugby practice. Since Sirius hated using his private study room for its intended purpose, and Remus seemed disinclined to use his own, the two of them could be found on their respective beds for several hours of each week, Remus reading, and Sirius trying to look as though he were.
Sometimes, Sirius struck up conversation in the vain hope that the weight in his chest would dissipate into friendship, though a not-so-small part of Sirius knew that talking to Remus was just an excuse to look at him. He already knew that Remus had a dry wit that only came out around people with whom he felt comfortable, but during the first weeks of November, Sirius learned other things about him, too.
Remus had a knack for making history sound interesting. He saw the same innate beauty in mathematics that Sirius himself did. He was patient when he explained difficult concepts and helped Peter with his school work. Remus was not just someone pleasant to look at, who might be fun to snog a few times, and he was not a friend like James, with whom Sirius could talk about everything and nothing. He was something in between, but also something more. Sirius had never really wanted anything more; more made life complicated.
Sirius spent much of his time distracted, daydreaming about kissing his soft-spoken friend, sneaking off for private wanks, and feeling guilty about it afterwards, because it was Remus, and he should not be having those kinds of thoughts about him. Remus did not like boys, and he did not like to be touched. If he ever found out how Sirius felt, he would probably be horrified and disgusted, and then they would not even be friends anymore, so Sirius did his best to bury his interest.
The nights when the dreams woke them were both the worst and the best. Neither of them was able to sleep through the terrors of the other anymore, and they would talk, sometimes for hours, until the dreams faded and they were able to sleep again. They did not talk about the dreams - not directly - but the dreams brought other things to mind that, hesitantly, they began to share, exhaustion and darkness and quiet conspiring to lower their guard. On those nights, Sirius felt closest to Remus, and least able to do anything about it.
"I miss Regs," Sirius confessed one night. "I always wonder what he would've been like, if he'd grown up."
"D'you ever talk to him?" Remus asked sleepily. They lay curled on their sides, facing one another across the narrow gap between their beds.
Sirius bit his lip. "No," he said guiltily. "I guess I don't figure he'd want to hear from me."
"D'you think he's - out there somewhere?"
"Dunno. Sometimes, 'specially when I'm home, I turn around half expecting to see him standing there. What d'you think?" Sirius had found that Remus thought about things more than most boys their age, and he was always curious to know the other boy's thoughts.
"I dunno either," admitted Remus. "But - maybe. I think, if he is out there, he probably misses you, too."
"You don't think he'd - you know - blame me for what happened?"
"If he could see you," Remus said slowly, "I think he'd see how sorry you are, and how much it hurt you, losing him. If there was anything to forgive, he'd forgive you."
When Remus's own dreams found him, Sirius never again made the mistake of trying to wake him with a touch, but instead would whisper as loudly as he dared, "Remus, it's a dream. Wake up!" Then Remus's eyes would fly open and his mouth would clamp shut and he would throw off the blankets and hang out the open window for long minutes, breathing in the night air, while Sirius lay curled up under his blankets, watching him and feeling useless.
Eventually, Remus would come back to bed, looking hunted, but needing to talk, to take his mind off the horrors he could not outrun. Talking about his family seemed to soothe him most, and the first person he usually spoke of was his sister, Natalie.
"She's brilliant," he told Sirius. "When I'm home and I - wake up, it doesn't matter how quiet I am; she always knows. I don't even know how much she knows about - what happened. She's never asked. But I'll go outside and sit on the step, and I'm never there more than five minutes before she's there with a mug of tea. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I write to her."
"We could probably get a kettle for the room," Sirius said. "If tea helps."
Remus gave a low chuckle. "Such a mother hen. You remind me of her, sometimes."
"I am not a mother hen!" hissed Sirius, scowling.
Remus raised a sceptical eyebrow. "I caught you watching me three times today. You're always hovering over me."
"Yeah, but -" sputtered Sirius, flustered. "That's not -"
"Oh, isn't it?" Remus teased, smiling. "What do you call it, then?"
Sirius had no answer for that - at least, none that he could give Remus. Instead, he turned his back on the other boy in mock outrage at the insult he had suffered. He knew he should be offended at being compared to his friend's thirteen-year-old sister, but Remus always spoke of her with such affection that Sirius felt absurdly pleased.
There was a huff of laughter from the other bed, and a fond voice whispered, "Good night, Sirius."
"Good night, you tosser," he replied, knowing that Remus could hear the smile in his voice.