Remus adjusts to life in the band without much trouble. The other members are all perfectly friendly, and Remus is content to watch from the sidelines as they joke and banter and reminisce. There's Werner, the lead singer, Annika, the bass player and backup vocalist, a pair of fraternal twins—Franz and Freida—who both play drums, and Johann, who plays flute and clarinet interchangeably. They're all Muggles, and they've all known each other since childhood, having grown up in the same small German town and gone through all their years of schooling together.
Like Remus, they love Bowie and Queen and Led Zeppelin and Elton John.
Like Remus, they are young and lost.
But unlike Remus, they have each other. And life has only fucked them up a little bit—enough to make them interesting and darkly funny, but not enough to break them.
Remus isn't jealous of them. Not at all.
Werner shuttles them to Italy in a beat-up van splattered with purple paint. It's a tight fit, with six people and all the instruments and sound equipment, and Remus usually ends up squeezed in the back corner between the drum kit and the secondhand keyboard he'd been given as a welcome present. Luckily, Werner is a decent driver, and Remus has only had to vomit in a paper bag twice.
Their gigs are always in small, tightly packed venues with too-bright lights and dense clouds of cigarette smoke. Remus likes to take a little Liquid Lightning before he performs—he plays better, he thinks, when he has that sharp buzz running under his skin like an electric current. Lila Tage's music isn't anything spectacular, but's it's easy and fun, and touring is a nice change of pace. It keeps Remus constantly busy, constantly occupied with his hands, constantly anticipating the next thing. It's easier than ever to pull blokes now, too—all Remus has to do is wink at a cute guy in the audience during his solo on "Want You Bad," and the deal is done.
Remus can't always tell when he's high and when he's sober. What is he even taking these days? He hasn't been able to find any Wizarding dealers who carry his two favorites, but the Muggle drugs he compensates with are strong and effective. They get the job done. They keep him running. And Remus doesn't need to see Sirius. He doesn't even want to. He doesn't.
"You're always so quiet, John," says Annika after a gig one night. "Are you shy or something?"
Remus shrugs. "I guess. I'm just happy to be here."
He offers her a cigarette, and they light up together, leaning against the van.
"I really like your vocals on 'What a Night,'" says Remus. "You've got a great voice."
She snickers. "I can hold a tune, but there's a reason Werner's the lead vocalist."
They laugh softly.
Even though Annika is standing right next to him, Remus suddenly feels like he's a million miles away. He nearly doubles over with the intensity of the loneliness as it hits him. He excuses himself and goes for a walk to nowhere.
He doesn't remember getting his hands on the Helios Oil, but he remembers taking it—his tolerance has gone down a little in the time he's gone without, and the dose he drops into his eyes is enough to conjure Sirius.
When he materializes, he blinks and looks around, confused. Where are we?
"Italy," says Remus. "I'm sort of in a band now."
Sirius snickers. You're a little rockstar, Moons—look at you.
Remus has never skated the cutting edge of fashion the way Sirius always seemed to, but he tried his best, looking for sweaters and slacks with flattering cuts, and colors that complimented his features. Now, he's mostly sticking to tight black t-shirts, tattered jeans, and his trusty Doc Martens. The piercing in his left ear that he was always too afraid to use—he'd gotten it in the first place on a dare from Sirius—now holds a dangling silver sword.
"Thanks," says Remus. "I thought you'd like it."
Remus gets owls from his father, sometimes. He also gets one from Dumbledore and one from McGonagall. He tosses them all away without opening them.
The cities the band stops at are all beautiful and ancient and breathtaking, but after a while, they start to blend together, especially when Remus is almost always high. Milan. Venice. Genoa. Florence. Rome. Naples. And then a week-long drive back up the coast to make it to Vienna in time for a private wedding gig. The full moon came when Remus was in Rome, and he managed to locate a werewolf pack on the outskirts of the city who transformed in underground tunnels. It was the best moon he'd had in ages.
"Why do you live among people who can never understand you?" asked the pack leader in the morning.
"I don't think anyone can ever be fully understood," said Remus. "I'm just going where the wind takes me."
The words had sounded cool in his head, but the second he said them out loud, he'd internally winced at his own stupidity.
Snape,
I'm coming to Edinburgh with my band. Come see me afterwards?
Remus
Fine.
SS
Remus hadn't been expecting Snape to go to the actual gig, but he spots him in the very back of the room, as close to the exit as he can be while still technically being inside. Remus catches his eye and grins. Snape pretends not to notice. The band plays well, and Remus finds himself pounding at the keys with an extra flourish.
"What sort of stage name is John Howell?" scoffs Snape when Remus goes to find him afterward.
He smiles sheepishly. "A lame one, I guess."
When they get to the hotel room, Snape is in a vicious mood. He wastes no time stripping Remus naked and shoving him to his knees. The force of the impact will certainly leave bruises, which excites Remus wildly. He hasn't eaten anything but edibles in days, and he feels lightheaded and giddy with need.
"What do you want?" asks Snape.
"Whatever you want."
Snape backhands him across the face, and Remus's head snaps to the left, his cheek burning. Snape is staring down at him, expression twisted in a mean smile, all sharp edges and ravenous hunger.
"I'll take what I want regardless," he sneers, "but I want to hear you say it. Remind me what a little slag you are, and I'll decide if you deserve this."
"Yes, sir," gasps Remus. "Please, I—I need you to hurt me. Punish me. Please."
Snape kicks Remus in the chest, and he falls over and lands on his back, sprawled on the floor in a decidedly undignified position. Before he can sit back up, Snape presses his boot onto his chest again, this time pinning him down and holding him in place.
"Is that so?" murmurs Snape. He leans over, running his eyes shamelessly up and down Remus's body. "And what am I punishing you for?"
"For—for being—" Remus swallows hard. "For being worthless."
An unnamable emotion ripples across Snape's face. Several seconds pass before he restores his blank mask.
"Bend over the arm of the couch," he says curtly.
Remus complies immediately, feeling a little faint as he makes his slightly unsteady way across the room. He's bit shaky, but he wants this too badly to ask Snape to slow down. This was the same thing Remus always wanted—why should it feel any different today than it had the other times?
"You've gotten thinner," observes Snape. He traces a cold finger down Remus's spine.
Remus shifts away, leaning further into the couch. "I'm never hungry anymore."
Snape's finger trails over Remus's left shoulder and pauses at the shallow gashes in his forearm.
"These are fresh cuts," he says.
"Yeah."
Remus had a bit of a fit earlier today when he saw a dead deer lying on the side of the road that, for an instant, had looked just like James's Animagus. To distract himself from the oncoming panic attack, Remus tried to conjure up Sirius with the Helios Oil, but there wasn't enough of it to summon him. The rest of Remus's usual Muggle stash had run dry as well. So, he'd turned to his razor blade.
Snape crosses his arms and steps away. "I'm not going to fuck you."
Remus's mouth drops open. He pushes himself up and turns around. "What? Why not?"
"Because I'm not your personal whipping boy, Lupin! I'm not here to help you destroy yourself."
Remus blinks. "Then why are you here?"
The lighting is dim, but Remus can see Snape's cheeks darken.
"I don't know," he snaps.
"Yeah," says Remus. "That's the part people can never seem to figure out."
Snape fixes him with a hard, cold look.
"You want to know why I'm here?" he snarls. "I'm here because it gets me off to watch you cry and squirm and beg. I'm here for me, not for you, so don't ruin it by trying to make me feel sorry for you."
Remus studies Snape face carefully. After a moment, he pulls a wandless Concealment Charm over himself, wrapping it snug around his exposed body.
"See?" he says. "Gone. You don't have to look at them anymore. No pity. No—whatever. I want you to hurt me. Can you do that?"
It turns out that he can.
There's a full-length mirror in the room, and Snape tells Remus to kneel in front of it. Snape gets on his knees behind him, forcing himself inside with only the smallest bit of lube. He wraps one arm around Remus's torso, pinning his wrists together in front of him; the other hand clamps over Remus's mouth, stifling the breathless pants and groans and soft, garbled pleading.
"Look at you," murmurs Snape. "Just a hole for me to stick my cock in."
Remus moans and closes his eyes, throwing his head back onto Snape's shoulder. He doesn't want to look in the mirror, but Snape forces his head back up and grips him even more tightly.
"Look."
Remus looks. His breath catches in his chest. He looks so…so weak, being propped up to be fucked and used, like a limp ragdoll. Snape meets his gaze in the mirror, eyes dark and smug and hungry. Each thrust is painful and dry, but Remus pushes into the burn. His cock is fully hard, and even though it's gone completely untouched, Remus comes the moment that Snape does, reaching a single, sharp climax.
Then, he passes out.
"Get. Up."
Remus blinks awake. He's in bed, in his pajamas, and Snape is standing over him with a look of absolute disdain.
"Sorry," mumbles Remus. "I don't know what happened."
Snape's lip curls. "Fortunately for you, I do know what happened. It's quite simple, really—you starved yourself to the point of malnourishment and fainted. Clearly, you were in no shape for such strenuous copulation."
Remus must be a bit out of it, because he starts giggling like an idiot at Snape referring to their kinky fucking as "strenuous copulation."
Snape isn't amused. "Drink this," he says. "It's a Nutritive Potion."
Remus obeys, downing the greenish liquid in a single gulp. It goes down easy, but it's uncomfortably dense and filling.
Snape watches him carefully and plucks the bottle back out of Remus's hand when it's empty.
"I'm not going to remind you, Lupin," he drawls, "that one must eat regularly in order to properly function."
"That's what I hear," says Remus. "Personally, I don't think I buy it."
Snape twitches, and Remus knows the man is probably itching to hit him again.
"You can," says Remus. "Slap me, I mean."
Snape looks startled, and…offended? "You just fainted. I'm not going to slap you."
"Oh. Alright." Remus settles back into the pillows. "Hey, I've got a question for you, if you don't mind."
"Joy of joys."
"Are you—queer?"
Snape gives him another strange look. "Would I be fucking you if I wasn't?"
Remus shrugs. "I didn't want to assume. I thought maybe your hatred for me overrode your lack of interest in men."
Snape's eyebrow quirks upward. "Just because I wasn't gallivanting the grounds of Hogwarts hand-in-hand with another man doesn't mean I had no interest in them. Some of us prefer to keep our preferences private."
"I understand. I never wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but people sort of just figured me out, I guess." Remus shifts again, pushing himself up against the headboard. "What month is it, by the way?"
Looking flummoxed by the abrupt change of topic, Snape merely blinks. "It's April. Nearly May."
"Oh."
Remus wasn't expecting that. The only thing he keeps track of is the full moon, which he logs meticulously and always has a plan for. There is nothing else to mark the passage of time—Werner handles the band's scheduling, so all Remus has to do is tag along and bang on the keyboard.
Snape fishes around in his bag and drops a Daily Prophet on the bedside table. "Here—catch yourself up on the times."
The front page makes his stomach sink.
GILDEROY LOCKHART, FORMER SCHOOMATE OF SIRIUS BLACK, GIVES TELL-ALL INTERVIEW
He flips through until he finds it—Lockhart, the little ponce, is beaming up from the paper, obviously thrilled to be catching his fifteen minutes of fame. Remus skins through the interview, growing increasingly incensed. "Black was an angry and deeply disturbed young man," says Lockhart with a morose shake of his head. "He was always plotting something, trying to climb to the top and make everyone fear him."
"What a leech," mutters Remus. "He didn't even know Sirius. Or any of us. He's just pulling it all out of his arse."
"Perhaps," said Snape. Then, smugly, he added, "Regardless, I'm inclined to agree with his assessment."
Remus's hand clenches around the paper, crumpling it. "Don't say that."
Snape raises a mocking brow. "Oh? And why not?"
"Because it's not true! Sirius wasn't calculating, or scheming, or—or any of that. He just acted on a whim, doing whatever felt right in the moment. I don't even know that he was…in full control of his faculties," says Remus.
Snape scoffs. "Was he ever?"
"I mean it. Sirius wasn't well," Remus whispers. "Last year, he went through an awful depression, and once it finally lifted, he had a…manic episode. He was jittery, reckless—more than usual, I mean—and talking a million miles an hour about things that didn't make any sense. He'd go days without sleeping, just pacing around trying to do a hundred different tasks. I convinced him to go see somebody to get meds, and that seemed to…even him out. But then—well, you saw when you Legilimized me. He stopped taking them."
"And that's why Black turned to the Dark Lord?" sneers Snape. "He was feeling sad?"
"Well, why did you turn to the Dark Lord?"
He's crossing a line. He knows it before he even opens his mouth, but he says it anyway because he wants to upset Snape. It works, but it also doesn't.
Snape grabs Remus by the collar of his shirt and hauls him up, glaring at him with so much heat that Remus is surprised he doesn't evaporate on the spot.
"I wanted power," says Snape quietly. "I was a fool—deluded and selfish and afraid, just like everyone else who joined him. To pretend that Black didn't have the same debased, corrupted dreams as the rest of us is willful ignorance."
Remus shoves Snape away. "You don't know what he wanted! Or what he was thinking! Or—or anything! Sirius spent his whole life rebelling against his family and everything they stood for—it doesn't make any sense that he'd join You-Know-Who. He was on drugs, too. I know he was."
Snape makes a dismissive noise. "You've been high for six months straight, and you're not hunting after the Dark Lord to pledge your undying loyalty to him. Being on drugs or being mentally ill doesn't excuse Black's deeds, Lupin! Get that through your thick skill!"
"I'm just saying that maybe he had a different motivation. Something nobody knew about."
"But what does it matter?" snarls Snape. "Why would it make a difference if Black had some other end goal in mind? Lily is still dead! Her child is still orphaned. The twelve Muggles and stupid fucking Pettigrew were still blown to bits in the middle of the street."
"I don't know!" yells Remus. "I don't know why it matters, or if it even does! I just—I just want to know why."
"If it's tormenting you so very much," says Snape in a voice like acid, "why don't you go pay your lover a visit at his new seaside palace and ask?"
Remus trembles. He's circled this line of thought so often, and it always turns into a spiral.
"I can't," he whispers. "I can't face him."
"Why?" Snape laughs, sharp and cruel. "Are you scared?"
"Yes," says Remus, without hesitation. "I am."
Snape stares at Remus as if he's never seen him before. Maybe he hasn't.
"You're disgusting," he spits. "You didn't see Black for what he was. You still don't. And now you're pining after him and racking your feeble mind for ways to absolve him so you don't have to feel guilty about loving him. I'll save you some time: Black is irredeemable. He made his choice, and his fate is sealed. Yours isn't. Do with that what you will."
Snape pulls on his long black coat. "Don't forget, Lupin, that Black proved himself capable of murder at the tender age of fifteen. If his plan had worked, I would have been killed, and you would have been executed. Or is the term put down?"
Remus closes his eyes. "I don't want to see you anymore."
Snape falters, just for a moment.
"The feeling is mutual," he snarls, and Disapparates on the spot.
Remus doesn't move from his bed for the rest of the night. Or the next morning.