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Chapter Text

It’s 5am and Sirius aches. His thighs, his back, his chest. He feels short of breath, his ribs concave; surely that explains the feeling in his heart, so big it could burst at any second. He stares up at the bunk above and imagines Remus’s form on the mattress, his long limbs tucked into a foetal position. He can hear him breathing, the tell-tale sound of Remus’s whistling nostril that always makes itself known when he’s either deep in concentration or fast asleep.

It’s 5am, and it’s just Sirius awake, now; it’s him and the birds, who are just now making their presence known in the waking city.

It’s 5am and Sirius is so sick with love that sleep feels like an impossible feat.

He shifts, rolling his hips back against the bed and gasping at the ache around his arse, the soreness an imprint of where Remus had pressed into him only hours before. Heat rolls through him as he remembers how they’d moved together in that dingy bathroom, how Remus had fucked him: hot and dirty until it wasn’t, until it was something else.

Then he’s overcome by something else, another feeling that leaves his cheeks red and blushing. He thinks of how much he wants, and how desperately he wants it, and how it’s all he can do not to scream it from the rooftops. Subtlety has never been his forte, and back in the bathroom, those three words had nearly spilled from his lips. He wonders how different things might be now if they had. Would he and Remus be curled up together now? Or would he be nauseous not with love, but heartbreak?

He exhales, turning his head to the side, feeling eyes on him.

Marlene.

He meets her glassy-eyed stare as she gestures towards the door, and he nods, following.

Outside, she squints up at him, eyes red as she eyes his cigarettes. He holds them out to her.

“Cheers. Nice night,” Marlene says, even though the sky is turning cotton candy pink. They watch the nesting pigeons scuttle along the roof ahead, and Sirius takes a deep drag of his cigarette.

“Why’d you lie, Marlene?” Sirius asks abruptly.

She looks shocked, obviously taken aback by his bluntness. Part of him is too, but more than that he’s tired of everyone talking in circles all the time, too afraid to say the words they really mean.

“Why does anyone lie?” Marlene replies. Her voice is a broken thing, and Sirius almost feels guilty for it. “People don’t have malicious intent. Most of the time. Usually.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel that way.”

“Anyway, I didn’t lie,” Marlene protests, albeit weakly—it doesn’t even sound as if she believes it. “I just... I didn’t tell the whole truth.”

“Sometimes that’s just as bad.”

Marlene is silent for a long time. She rubs the back of her hand across her cheek. Sirius doesn’t think she’s going to reply when she finally says, “I know. I know...”

“And yet,” he says.

“And yet.”

They stay like that: silent, together, before Marlene says, “so, did you get your heart broken last night too?”

Sirius shakes his head.

Marlene turns to face him, exhaling a puff of smoke. “Then what’s got you looking so glum?”

He lifts a shoulder up in a shrug. He’s not entirely sure of that, himself. He should be happy, elated. He had Remus more thoroughly last night than he’s ever had him before, and it only left him wanting even more. Walburga always said he was greedy.

He can feel Marlene’s gaze on the side of his face, but he keeps his eyes carefully trained on the pigeons. Remus always insists on feeding them, a tradition that started all the way back in secondary school. The caretaker had tried his hardest to get them punished for the flocks of pigeons that would congregate outside their dorm window, but feeding birds was hardly against the school rules, and Minnie had always had a soft spot for them, her Gryffindor boys.

“So what are you going to do? Whatever you’re doing clearly isn’t working, even though you’re both obviously obsessed with each other.”

At that, Sirius feels unsteady, so in lieu of a response, he just sucks his cigarette, hard. He sucks too hard, his lungs filling too quickly with smog, and coughs roughly.

She rolls her eyes, looking truly exhausted. “When he isn’t looking at you, he’s looking at whoever you’re talking to. And frowning.”

“He’s not—”

“He is. And it’s sad. You’re both sad. You’re both sad boys who want to hold hands but are too afraid, so you just stare at each other and fuck in bathrooms—note the plural bathrooms, Sirius, we all heard you in the hostel bathroom. Thin walls,” she says grimly. “It’s been tough to watch, to be honest. It’s cooked. I’d be knocking your heads together if I wasn’t so fucking tired.”

Sirius blinks. “You’re incredibly skilled at deflection, you know. Just a second ago I could have sworn we were talking about your relationship.”

“Would it be so awful to be honest with each other?”

Sirius raises his eyebrow, sceptical, and Marlene flushes.

“Right,” she says. “Not that I can talk about honesty.”

Sirius flicks the ash from his cigarette. “And that I don’t understand,” he says softly.

“It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

Marlene turns, hunching in on herself. She looks small and fragile as she says, “when we broke up the first time, it was because she couldn’t see a future with me.” Marlene looks down, biting her quivering lip. “I thought about that a lot. And then I got even more lost, and then I got—sick.” Her voice catches on the last word. “But, it’s funny: the moment I found out, there was only one thing on my mind. Dorcas. I’d think of the future, and it was all… dark and awful and uncertain, but she was always there. I tried but I—I couldn’t.” She rubs the back of her hand roughly against her eyes. “I know I fucked up. I know I was wrong. But I just couldn’t bear the idea of seeing her again and her finding out about it, and only staying with me because she felt sorry for me. I didn’t want some give-a-wish type shit, I just wanted to know if I had a real chance.”

To that, Sirius doesn’t know what to say. No words feel big enough. He flicks his burnt-out cigarette over the balcony and opens his arms. “Darling, come here.”

Remus looks vaguely lost as he stumbles into the kitchen the next morning, raising an awkward hand to muss his already-messy curls. Wordlessly, Sirius passes him his coffee, prepared exactly to his taste (one spoonful of chocolate powder, two sugars, and a healthy dollop of milk). Remus smiles gratefully, before turning away from him, his movements jerky and abrupt.

Beneath Remus’s curls, Sirius can see the beginnings of a blush, starting at the tips of his ears and travelling down the back of his neck. The sight makes him feel hot and fluttery inside, something that is frankly absurd given the way they touched each other the night before—dirty, messy, and desperate in the club bathroom. Yet here he is, getting worked up over a blush.

Over breakfast, Sirius sneaks glances at Remus, who is bespectacled and weary-eyed as he listens to the rambling tales of a German hostel goer. His expression brightens when Sirius catches his eye, flashing a smile. Remus smiles back, and the fluttery feeling returns to Sirius’s stomach, now tenfold.

The morning passes with their new friend group fractured down the middle: Marlene stays glued to Sirius’s side, while Dorcas and Remus have started communicating through glances that Sirius can’t make sense of.

They barely get a moment to themselves, and Sirius can feel himself slipping. When Remus is close to him, his brain goes quiet. When Remus is out of sight, everything gets too loud again. His heart and stomach and lungs feel as though they are eating themselves, covert cannibalism. Sirius is this close to climbing the walls, and the feeling only eases when Remus is near him once more.

He feels unhinged, out of it. Prone to snapping. He has to force himself not to bite (bite!) a server whose fingers brush against Remus’s as he accepts his change. He catches himself glaring at Dorcas when she presses her arm against Remus’s, on the opposite side of the lounge to Sirius and Marlene.

It’s these kinds of impulses that have seen him in trouble in the past, lashing out at children, and blowing up at Fabian back in Berlin. So he tries to stuff it all down, down down down. He can be good, reasonable. Rational. Sane. He can, and it’s just as important that he proves it to himself as he does Remus.

Only, the feeling in his chest is becoming impossible to ignore. His love is blooming, growing larger than he knows how to deal with, and it’s no longer a matter of if it spills out, but when.

He chews the inside of his cheek as he stares at Remus’s knobbly knuckles, at the joints of his fingers, imagining them against his own hands, his skin, inside his flesh, reaching into his chest.

“Alright?” Remus’s expression is soft, quizzical. Dorcas is fast asleep at his shoulder, exhausted. Sirius suppresses the desire to push her off the couch (a contradictory thought, considering Marlene is tucked into his own side), and quashes the desire to lean across the chasm between them and kiss Remus on the mouth. Oh, how he wishes that was something that they did: acts of casual intimacy.

Instead, he shakes his hair out like a dog and fixes Remus with one of his trademark grins, which stretches the skin around his mouth.

“Never better,” he says.

Remus’s eyes linger on him. Sirius would give the world to know what he’s thinking.

That evening, Remus accidentally pours water on their restaurant table, a good 30 centimetres away from his glass, and Sirius laughs until his stomach hurts.

“Hush, you,” Remus says, all faux annoyance, despite the smile that teases the corner of his mouth.

They visit Buda castle, and Sirius’s gaze is hot and heavy as he follows Remus about as he rambles about history and the people of the past.

At one point, he nips to the loo and returns to find Remus seated nearby, sitting upright, stiff-backed, and fast asleep.

He looks absurd. The position does not look comfortable, his legs crossed, skinny ankles exposed. But Sirius has to flex his fists to stop himself from reaching out and squeezing. He wants to grab Remus, to curl into him. To fold him up and keep him in his pocket where he’ll always be near and dear.

They’re all subdued as they say their farewells the next morning. The street beside the hostel is protected from the hustle and bustle of the main road but still feels too exposed with their emotions so high.

Dorcas’s mouth is a tight line, and Marlene’s eyes are red. Sirius’s heart hurts looking between them: at the obvious hurt, and the even more obvious love.

“Keep in touch, yeah?” he murmurs as he pulls Marlene in for a hug. “We’ll be around. If you, y’know...” he squeezes her. “Need an escape.”

Marlene sniffs, dabbing at her eye in a way that almost appears casual. Almost. “I think I ought to stop running, don’t you think?” She laughs wetly. “Take care, Sirius. See you soon,” she says with a squeeze.

“Next time you’re in London,” he says, hugging her tighter.

“Or next time you’re in Brisbane.”

“If I’m ever down under, you’ll be the very first to know.”

Marlene squeezes him.

“I still don’t understand,” Sirius murmurs, fiercely returning the hug. “But it’s okay.” When they pull apart, both of their eyes shift to Dorcas. “She should know, though. You have to trust her.”

Marlene nods, her tears falling freely now. She elbows him gently. “You should trust him too.”

His eyes shift to Moony, then, his eyebrows knotted, lip drawn into his mouth, as he listens to Dorcas talk. The kindness in his expression makes Sirius feel unsteady. God, fuck. He loves him so much.

“Just us again, Moons,” Sirius murmurs once they’re seated on the train.

Beside him, Remus is a silent, constant presence. Remus has never demanded attention in the same way that he and James do, yet he’s always held Sirius’s attention regardless. He’s always found his eyes trailing after Remus, only now they’re also simmering with barely contained want, and a million other feelings Sirius could never put a name to.

He shifts in his seat. His body aches dully, his muscles still tender from their club bathroom activities. He thinks about making some stupid joke about the hard train seats but decides better of it when he turns to look at Remus. He’s hunched over—his shoulders in a position that cannot be comfortable—nibbling his thumbnail, his fluffy eyelashes fluttering as he reads his novel.

He snaps his mouth shut, even though his need to disrupt the stillness is mounting. More than that need, though, is the need to prove to Remus that he can maintain peace, and that he’s not always there to disrupt it.

He doesn’t recall drifting off.

When he comes back to himself, it’s to discover he’s pressed against Remus, his head resting on his shoulder, with gentle fingers carding through his hair. The sensation is so similar to that of his dreams that, at first, he thinks nothing of it.

But not even his dreams could emulate the way his body feels, and nor could they replicate the fastidiousness of Remus’s touch. His fingers are so gentle as he strokes the nape of Sirius’s neck and the line of his jaw, and Sirius has to stifle his sigh.

Then, those fingertips are touching his cheek, nose. Lips.

Sirius would give anything to see Remus’s face, to know what kind of expression he wears as he touches Sirius with those gentle fingers, but he keeps his eyes firmly shut—anything to prolong the moment.

He hears Remus sigh softly, before letting his head rest atop Sirius’s. Nestled into Remus’s side, awash in the scents of rosemary and old books, Sirius lets sleep claim him once more.

Sirius pulls up at the gate, turning off the gas and throwing the car into silence.

It’s been just the two of them since Cluj-Napoca, where they departed the train and hired an old Dacia with a charmingly spluttery engine. Now, they’re in the depths of Transylvania, surrounded by rolling green hills that feel more akin to those of a fairy tale than a Gothic novel. Outside, the cicadas hum, a hazy orange sunset giving way to the night. The last fingers of sunlight part the distant trees, stretching across the peaks of the lower Carpathians.

It’s just him and Remus, now. There is no one else for hours.

Remus redirects his gaze from the distant mountains to Sirius, and Sirius’s skin burns under his gaze. He can feel Remus’s eyes trail down his neck, hovering at the spot above his collarbone. He knows there’s a bruise there. He’d stared at it that morning, pressing his fingers to it, hard, in the hope that it might remain longer.

He also knows he’s not imagining the heat in Remus’s brown eyes; it’s been a long journey between Budapest and their little cottage in the Romanian countryside, and they’ve done well to keep their hands to themselves for as long as they have.

“How long are we here for?” Remus asks, his voice a gentle disruption of the quiet.

“Five days.” Sirius’s voice feels rough on the way out.

“It’s very isolated,” Remus comments, after a while.

Sirius bites his lip as he considers the technicalities of reaching over and climbing across the pedals, into Remus’s lap.

“Emmeline would have loved it here,” Remus continues, his eyes fixed on the setting sun. He’s bathed in gold and Sirius fantasises idly about pulling out his paints and book of canvas to capture him. Would he be able to replicate the warmth of his eyes? He’s not certain he could, even with all the paint in the world at his disposal.

It takes Sirius several moments to process Remus’s words through the haze of his thoughts, but when the words do register, he freezes.

“Rem—” he tries, but his words fall between them like frayed cobwebs, as Remus pushes the car door open and steps out.

He raises his arms above his head and stretches, exposing his scarred navel. If Sirius looks closely—and he always is, lately—he thinks he can see the hallmark signs of a clenched jaw, but it’s hard to tell in the fading light.

Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking. It feels strange to wish for such a thing. Sirius hates himself a little bit for wishing Remus was more bothered by the mention of Emmeline, but if Remus had an ex, Sirius would be tearing himself up inside at the thought of them together. Benjy is bad enough, and he’s nothing, he’s no one.

He pushes the car door open with a little more force than is necessary. It clips the edge of the wooden shed to his left, making an awful crunching sound, but he pays it little attention as he follows Remus into the cottage.

It’s a quaint little building with a thatched roof, fold-out windows, and folk art lining the exterior. The rooms are small, and there are exactly three of them. It’s an intimate space, clearly meant for two. Just from looking at it, Sirius can tell that the loveseat will only just be large enough for the two of them, so long as they’re curled up together. The table is not large enough for their knees not to touch beneath it.

Remus flicks a switch, and the lightbulb blinks to life with a loud click. He smiles. “Just like my Nan’s.”

Remus’s expression is warm with the memory, and Sirius can feel his adoration for his Nan from across the room. Even if it’s meant for someone else, Remus’s love is still a heady thing, and Sirius has to stop himself from swaying towards it, a moth to a flame.

Sirius can’t reconcile the warmth of Remus’s expression with his own grandparents. His grandmother’s house was fitted with candelabras and chandeliers, and the only thing she ever loved was her lapdog Constance who had an unsettling countenance that even Sirius, ever the dog lover, struggled to appreciate.

In the lounge, Remus traces a stack of dusty cassette tapes as Sirius flicks through the cottage’s logbook, reading the notes left by previous guests.

Thank you for making our honeymoon so special, one writes.

We fell in love all over again.

Sirius swallows as he looks up at Remus, whose fluffy curls almost touch the ceiling. If he’s not careful, he’ll clip his forehead on the doorway.

“Rather small, isn’t it,” Sirius comments, trying to keep his tone light and airy against the tight anticipation he feels growing in his chest.

Remus blinks, the space between his eyebrows creasing adorably. “Hm?”

“The cottage,” he specifies, leaning his hip against the table.

“Oh!” Remus scratches the back of his neck. Sirius isn’t certain, but he thinks he can see the tips of his ears reddening amongst his curls. “Yes, it’s, er—cosy.”

Everything feels poised on a knife’s edge. They’re circling each other, waiting for the other to slip, and Sirius is tense in anticipation of the moment when they’ll next be tugging at each other’s clothes again. But he’s determined that this time it won’t be him. He’s been the one initiating everything up until now, but this time he wants it to be Remus. He wants Remus to want him, and not just when they’re pressed up against each other in bed, and the terrifying act of closing the distance between them has already been done in their sleep.

He wants Remus to be the one to seek him out.

Remus hums under his breath as he stirs the contents of the pot. Sirius is keeping a casual but close eye on him, as things tend to erupt or catch on fire whenever Moony sets foot in the kitchen.

But all is quiet, aside from the scratching of charcoal against paper and Remus’s gentle humming. It’s just them for what feels like forever.

Sirius doesn’t need to look at the page to know what he’s drawing: he knows he’ll find hunched shoulders, a notched nose, and soft curls.

Remus chuckles under his breath, drawing Sirius’s attention up from where he was staring at the long lines of Remus’s legs.

“What?” Sirius asks, head tilting to the side.

Remus’s chuckle turns jubilant, less controlled, and he covers his mouth in an attempt to stifle it. Sirius wishes he wouldn’t.

“Oh,” Remus says between laughs. “Oh, bother.”

“What?” Sirius asks again, fighting a smile of his own.

“It’s sugar.”

“Where?” Sirius’s eyes widen. “In the pasta?”

Remus nods, desperately trying to fight his giggles, and Sirius loves him so, so desperately.

“We even brought pre-made sauce,” Remus gasps out. “You gave me one job.”

Sirius peers into the pot of beige sludge, stirring it to discover that what were once firm tubes are now shredded, a bubbling soup of floppy strips.

A shocked laugh of his own bubbles up his throat. “Oh Moony, sugar’s not your only issue; the penne’s practically dissolved. It’s like confetti.”

Then, Remus’s laughter turns into hiccups, and Sirius laughs until his belly aches.

“Shut—hic!—shut up, Padfoot,” he grumbles, even as he struggles to keep a smile from his face.

For a moment, Sirius pretends that this is their life together, that every day they stand side-by-side laughing about Remus’s culinary disasters as Remus pretends to be annoyed, in a world where Sirius doesn’t have to pretend not to be hopelessly in love. In Sirius’s fantasy world, Remus’s faux annoyance is so endearing that he can’t resist kissing him, and Remus kisses back, and before they know it they’re fucking in the middle of the kitchen.

But this isn’t that world, and their laughter slowly fizzles out before Sirius figures out how to salvage their dinner.

Sirius emerges from his shower with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.

He throws himself on the bed beside Remus, burying his face in the soft linen and shivering at the sensation of the sheets against his skin. He stretches, arching his back and letting out a satisfied hum. He doesn’t have to look up to know that Remus is watching him; he can feel his gaze burning up and down his form.

And sure enough, he lifts his head to find Remus frozen in place, staring, one hand holding his novel, and the other holding a biscuit half-raised to his mouth.

“Bathroom’s free,” Sirius says with an innocent smile.

Remus blinks and drops his biscuit, as if he forgot he was holding it. He doesn’t even frown at the trail of crumbs it leaves behind in the sheets, which tells Sirius that his attention is truly elsewhere.

Putting his novel to the side, distracted, Remus says, “Right. Erm—I’ll just,” before pausing, as if lost for words.

Sirius gazes up at him through his lashes. Touch me, he tries to say with his eyes. Take me. Make me yours.

“Bathroom,” Remus says coarsely, shaking his head, and sweeps out of the room in what can only be described as an escape.

Sirius lets his head drop to his pillow and groans.

Remus stays in the shower for a long time. Briefly, Sirius thinks about checking up on him to see if he’s drowned or fallen in the shower and hit his head, but then the water stops, and he hears rustling, and knows Remus is alive.

He’s on the cusp of sleep, warm and cocooned, when Remus returns to the bed. The room is quiet. Out here, in the middle of Transylvania, there are no city sounds nor the guttural snores of their hostel dorm mates. Outside, there’s an owl, and beside him Remus reads, glasses perched atop the notch in his nose, silent aside from the occasional shuffling of pages turning.

Sirius nuzzles further into his pillow, fully content at that moment with the simple knowledge that Remus is beside him. This is as nice as the sex, he thinks. In fact, the only thing that would make it nicer is if he could wind his limbs around Remus without the needing the pretence of sexual intimacy, if he could run his toes up and down the length of his legs just because he can, because that’s what they do. Because they’re lovers, real lovers who kiss and fuck and make love and cuddle and talk about the future knowing the other will be a permanent fixture in it, not just as a friend, but as more.

But this, he thinks, is nice.

It’s perfect, almost, if he lets himself pretend.

Bleary-eyed, he blinks around the room as the pre-dawn glow sets the curtains aflame. He’s shirtless but warm, and a quick feel around reveals that he’s been covered with the blanket from the couch. It must have been draped over him at some point.

He twists around to find Remus beside him, facing Sirius in the foetal position, with his long limbs tucked in and the sheet kicked down around his feet. His lips are parted and his breathing is even, rhythmic. Sirius can see a strip of freckled skin where his plaid nightshirt has hitched up at his hip, and aches to reach out and touch.

He rises from the bed, careful not to wake Remus in the process. As he pulls on his trousers, his gaze finds its way back to the bed, as if drawn in a magnet. Remus looks younger in his sleep. Sirius knows life hasn’t been very gentle with his Moony, but sleep softens him—enough so that even the scar on his face looks less violent.

It’s easy to forget how carefully controlled Remus keeps himself until he’s like this, all soft and loose. He wasn’t always like that though, Sirius thinks. Once, he’d felt like a window to a world Sirius didn’t know yet still understood. But at some point between fifteen and sixteen, Remus pulled the shutters closed.

I wish you’d let me in, he thinks, dragging rough fingers through knotted hair. In Budapest he’d tried to peer through, to know his secrets, but Remus had instantly shut him out and boarded his window up.

Sure, Sirius has secrets of his own. Well, he has a secret. His love for Remus is a secret, but he doesn’t want it to be. Keeping it trapped inside is driving him mental, spreading like a virus from his heart to his veins. It’s only a matter of time before an artery gets cut, and he’ll be gushing love out everywhere uncontrollably.

He gazes down at Remus’s sleeping face for a long time. Too long. Long enough that he almost has the decency to feel ashamed.

By the time he’s outside and lighting up his cigarette, the birds are well and truly awake. The morning still holds some of the night’s chill and he curls into his jacket as he inhales, the smoke warming him from the inside out.

Morning mist hangs over the valley and its rolling hills. He ought to get his sketchbook out and memorialise it somehow. Then he thinks of Remus’s unconscious face, and how he’d like to memorialise that too.

No matter what happens afterwards, he wants to remember all of it, every expression that has crossed Remus’s face, every gasp and sigh that he’s elicited. The good parts, the bad parts, Sirius wants it all, and he wants it forever. It’s a heady thought, but it’s true; it’s love.

Fuck, he’s in love.

He sucks his cigarette, hard, until his lungs are burning.

He thinks back to himself at sixteen, newly disinherited and roiling with a grief so large and confusing he couldn’t put words to it. After that cataclysmic summer he’d come back to the dorms despondent, and Remus had looked at him with brown eyes so soft and full of understanding. It meant the world to him back then. It still does. After being burnt off the Black family tree and losing everything he thought he knew, he remembers thinking I can’t lose this. I can’t lose this, because then I truly will be lost.

A tornado is how Walburga used to describe him. At five, he thought it was a term of endearment. Now he knows better.

But maybe… maybe. If anyone could handle a tornado, it’d be Remus.

He stumbles a little as he crosses the threshold back into the cottage, dropping his still-smoking cigarette butt. It leaves a tiny scorch mark on the welcome mat, a blight amongst the bright colours.

“Shit,” he mutters, kneeling to pick it up.

Ahead of him, he hears a sharp intake of breath. He looks up.

It’s Remus. His hair is a mess, and he’s all sleep-mussed and ruffled in his plaid pyjamas that have begun to come unspooled at his right ankle. His left cheek is crisscrossed by old scars and lines from his pillow.

Sirius’s throat goes dry.

He swallows, smiling. “Morning, moonshine,” he says as he stands, straightening up.

Remus doesn’t speak. His amber eyes are wide, and he looks startled—worried, even—before his eyes track down and his expression morphs into something very different.

Sirius looks down, following Remus’s gaze to his own bare chest, his pale skin stark against his tattoos and leather jacket.

He looks back up, opens his mouth to speak, but Remus doesn’t give him the chance. He moves forward, unsteady on his long legs, crowding Sirius up against the door. His eyes are still a little puffy from sleep, but the dazed look on his face is fully eclipsed now by desperation.

Desperation, Sirius knows well.

Their breath mingles in the space between them as Sirius stares at Remus’s eyelids, his eyelashes. Remus’s eyes are downcast as he traces his thumb across Sirius’s lips, his cupid’s bow, his bottom lip.

All the warning Sirius gets is a flash of molten honey before Remus kisses him.

Home, he thinks, this is what home feels like, what it tastes like; rosemary and warm, chapped lips moving against his.

Remus’s kisses are edged with desperation and undercut with softness. His mouth is hot and seeking but his fingers are gentle as they stroke along the skin of Sirius’s jaw. Remus’s mouth promises to devour him, but his touch is proprietary in its tenderness, his fingers tracing Sirius’s skin as though he’s a treasured possession, fragile porcelain at risk of shattering.

But Sirius wants to shatter, and he wants to see what Remus would do with all the pieces. There’s no one else in the whole goddamn universe that he would trust with that, with him, and all his sharp edges.

He nips Remus’s bottom lip hard—hard enough to make him gasp and to draw blood. Remus’s answering moan sounds as though it comes from deep within, and he rises against Sirius with renewed fervour, his hands no longer gentle but firm, grasping.

They stumble back inside, Remus directing them in the vague direction of the loveseat where he pushes Sirius down and straddles him, hands exploring the naked expanse of his chest beneath his jacket. He presses himself against Sirius’s bare stomach. He’s rock fucking hard, and Sirius grasps Remus’s hips, pulling him down against him, rising, gasping into Remus’s mouth.

Sirius practically mewls when Remus sucks his lip into his mouth, hissing as he drags it between his teeth.

“Do you want me to be… rough? Do you like that?” Remus pants against his mouth.

Sirius gasps. Does he like it rough? He likes it when there’s evidence, when he can look at his body and see the impression of Remus’s touch.

I like it when you act like you want me, he thinks.

Remus’s breath catches, and Sirius realises that he’s spoken aloud.

In lieu of words, Remus responds with kisses, now with a truly starving edge, as though no amount of Sirius will ever be enough. Sirius understands that feeling.

He just wishes it were real.

Remus drags his hands back down Sirius’s naked chest as if he can’t help himself, his fingers edging beneath his leather jacket and wrapping around his waist.

“Pretty,” Remus says, pulling back, sounding as though he’s in a daze and the words are slipping free without his knowledge. His lips are red, puffy, and kiss-slick, and he looks like the culmination of all Sirius’s best dreams. “So pretty.”

“No,” Sirius gasps out, his usually razor-sharp senses reduced to white noise. “You.”

Remus doesn’t respond, doesn’t protest. Instead, he takes his kisses down Sirius’s chest, bringing one of Sirius’s nipples between his teeth, honey eyes gazing up at him beneath thick lashes as he sucks. Sirius throws his head back, arching his in pleasure, and Remus has to push his hips down against the sofa to stop them from toppling it.

Remus continues his relentless assault, tracing his tongue around Sirius’s tattoos, sucking the skin against his hipbones. When he reaches the band of Sirius’s trousers, he pauses. He strokes a thumb around the tattoo at Sirius’s hipbone, a two-headed calf skull.

Sirius rolls his hips, encouraging Remus to move, to do anything.

“Impatient,” Remus says, huffing out a laugh, but it doesn’t have the effect he intended—not when his cheeks are red, and his pupils are black.

“If you don’t touch me right now, I’m going to die.”

Remus’s eyes flash, as if he wants to say something but chooses not to. But whatever it was still has him sinking lower, between Sirius’s thighs.

Sirius comes with his legs flung over Remus’s shoulders, his whole body shaking as though he’s attached to an electric current. His thighs are so tightly squeezed together that it must be uncomfortable for Remus, but he doesn’t move, still fucking Sirius’s hole with his tongue as if there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing.

It’s only afterwards that Sirius registers how raw his throat feels, like he’s been screaming at the top of his lungs. And is that come in his hair? Hazily, he notices that it’s on the cushion too. They’ll have to sort that out. Later, though.

Remus emerges from between his legs, his lips and chin glistening, face red and sweaty and so fucking gorgeous, and it’s all Sirius can do to pull him up by his collar, kissing him with everything he’s got.

He strokes a hand down the side of Remus’s face, at the patchy stubble sprouting along his jaw before Remus inevitably shears it off.

“How’s your jaw?” Sirius murmurs, pulling away from Remus’s mouth despite its siren’s call, luring Sirius back in.

“Hm?” Remus hums, blinking his eyes open. His expression is hazy, as though he’s the one who just came so hard he saw stars. A glance down at Remus’s obvious hardness suggests otherwise. “My jaw?”

Sirius laughs, hopelessly endeared by Remus’s expression, by the redness around his mouth, by his messy hair and starry eyes. He massages Remus’s jaw, right at the spot where it gets most tender.

“Don’t want you getting lockjaw on my behalf,” Sirius teases, his voice only just above a whisper. “It’s a long way to the nearest hospital.”

“I don’t care,” Remus says. His fingers tighten where they’re laced in the hair at the back of Sirius’s head, and he pulls him back in. Their lips meet, and once again the ever-present buzzing in Sirius’s mind goes quiet, his thoughts mollified beyond the never-ending torrent of Remus Remus Remus.

He manoeuvres them to the floor, his heart warming with how pliant and easy-to-move Remus is, placing his usually tightly-wrested control in Sirius’s hands.

Sirius moves to shrug off his jacket, but Remus stops him with frantic hands at his chest.

“No,” he pants, his brown eyes blown wide. “Keep it on.”

Sirius melts.

“Whatever you want,” he promises, throwing a leg over Remus’s hips and lining them up.

When he sinks down, it’s as if time itself has paused. Remus is still in his pyjamas, his pants and trousers pulled down to his knees, and his shirt rucked up. Sirius’s fingernails are digging into the skin of Remus’s abdomen, half-moons amongst old scars.

Sirius lifts himself, feeling the entire length of him, before dropping back down with a gasp. He’s so full. It burns where he’s stretched around Remus, with so little preparation other than that from Remus’s tongue, but he doesn’t mind. He loves it. He’s half hard already with the knowledge that he’s going to be feeling this for hours.

At the thought of Remus taking him again later, his hole still sore from the previous round, Sirius digs his fingernails in a little harder and rides him a little faster, his desperation now barely concealed.

Remus’s expression shifts, his mouth tightening and his wide eyes scorching, and clutches at the flesh of Sirius’s hips beneath his jacket, his nails digging in for a split second—a split second of white-hot heat—before he hesitates and withdraws his touch, as if afraid to hurt Sirius. It’s an absurd notion. Doesn’t Remus know that he’d let him carve his impression into his skin? That he’d let him bite so hard it scarred?

“No, don’t stop, do it,” Sirius pants, grinding down with a vicious roll of his hips. “Mark me, scratch me, bite me, please.”

Remus claps his hand to his mouth, his moan muffled as he bites down on his own skin. It occurs to Sirius, then, that he’s trying to muffle himself. And that just won’t do.

“Talk to me,” he murmurs, drawing Remus’s hand away from his mouth, intertwining their fingers together. He notices then the blood pooling at the spot where Remus bit himself, and he lifts their hands to his mouth to kiss the bloody bitten skin.

Remus shakes his head, as if he can’t speak, doesn’t know how to. “Sirius, I’m—I—”

Sirius nods, gripping Remus’s hand tighter, not sure what he’s trying to say or convey, only knowing that the feeling in his chest is too much, that he’s about to burst.

Remus shifts beneath him and the angle changes from dizzying to transcendent. “Fuck,” he cries as Remus hits the spot inside him that makes his vision fuzzy. “There, right there,” he gasps. “Oh fuck, baby. Moony. Remus.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Remus looks entirely overcome, and Sirius can feel the exact moment he comes, the exact moment his body tenses and trembles all at once. The mere thought of Remus coming inside him—because of him—is enough to send Sirius over the edge without so much as a finger on his cock.

Fuck.

He collapses, uncaring of the mess between them sticking their skin together and tainting his jacket. Beneath him, Remus’s breaths are coming through heaving gasps, which eventually slow.

Sirius’s heartbeat never stops racing.

“Well,” he croaks, his face centimetres away from being buried in the crook of Remus’s armpit. He wants to push forward, to lick, to rub his face in the scent there like some feral beast. He doesn’t. But he wants to. “Good morning to you too, Moony.”

After that, it’s as though a dam has burst. No longer travelling with friends or sharing rooms with strangers, they don’t have to keep their hands off one another. So they don’t.

They don’t leave the cottage for days. At first, they don’t leave the bed. After that, they’re more adventurous, taking their activities to other parts of the cottage. Pikelets are burned, and Sirius nearly floods the bathroom when he gets distracted by Moony’s long legs while running a bath.

They fuck low and slow in the afternoon with sunlight streaming through the windows. Outside, the world has come to life, birds singing the songs of the Romanian countryside, but Sirius’s world is relegated to this room, to the man in front of him, to his hands and chest and cock and ankles and hands and mouth and eyes.

“How many times do you think you can come?” He pants. His eyes hover over the fresh stain on the arm of the sofa. He can’t even comprehend the damage they’ve done to the bedroom, which has become something of a warzone in the past day.

But with Remus’s caramel eyes trained on his, Sirius finds it difficult to care about anything but the man before him.

“In one day?” Remus pushes his hair back, his curls damp with sweat.

“In one go.”

Remus’s responding laugh is startled. There’s a stray eyelash on his cheekbone, and Sirius wants to steal it, to make a wish. “Is that a challenge?”

He licks a strip up the side of Remus’s face, catching the eyelash and a bead of sweat at his brow. He swallows and smiles sunnily. “Perhaps.”

Sirius has never, ever wanted anyone like this before. Every second spent outside Remus’s arms feels like a second wasted, and every moment he’s not touching him, he’s plotting how to get close to him again.

It’s an obsession at this point. Beyond one.

He’s still sweating from their exertions, the bedsheets sticking to his skin in a way that might be unpleasant if not for the warm breeze billowing through the room. The air is bright and green against the heady scent of sex.

Beside him, Remus turns a page. His glasses are fogged at the inner corners, and his curls are sticking to his neck. Sirius watches a bead of sweat roll down his throat to his collarbone, where Sirius leans forward to meet it with his tongue. Remus leans into the touch, sighing, as Sirius follows his tongue with his lips, kissing his freckles.

“Padfoot,” he breathes, as Sirius makes his way up his throat. “I—ah… my refractory period isn’t that fast.” The molten heat of his voice suggests otherwise, but Sirius lets him have it.

He runs his teeth along the freckled skin of Remus’s collarbone, before sitting up and smiling wickedly. “I’m just kissing you.”

He’s taken aback by the expression he finds on Remus’s face: so warm and affectionate that Sirius finds himself struggling to breathe properly.

“Kissing,” Remus repeats, voice wry. “Nibbling, more like.”

“I’ll show you nibbling,” Sirius says, before diving forward and crashing into Remus, knocking his book askew. He flings a leg over Remus’s waist and winds his arms around his middle. He buries his face in the crook of his throat and presses one light bite to Remus’s throat before settling.

He feels Remus melt beneath him, his hands feeling down Sirius’s back, at first tentative, then curious.

“Read to me, then,” Sirius says, his words muffled against Remus’s skin.

Remus keeps one hand on the small of Sirius’s back as he retrieves his novel.

“For Love,” he begins, voice soft and rough all at once, “to which we may now return, has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two nails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them.”

Sirius’s heart pounds, the heavy thump thump thump surrounding him and filling him up so that there’s no room for anything else. He tightens his arms where they’re laced around Remus’s waist and burrows his face right into the side of his neck, imagining what it would take to crawl inside and stay there. Sirius’s heart could easily sustain them both.

Remus’s breath hitches, but he continues. “In this case, Orlando's love began her flight towards him with her white face turned, and her smooth and lovely body outwards. Nearer and nearer she came wafting before her airs of pure delight.

“All of a sudden (at the sight of the Archduchess presumably) she wheeled about, turned the other way round; showed herself black, hairy, brutish; and it was Lust the vulture, not Love, the Bird of Paradise, that flopped, foully and disgustingly, upon his shoulders.”

Sirius bites down on the skin before him, suddenly needing to tether himself to Remus somehow. He’s overwhelmed with the urge to draw blood, to scar, to claim. His love and lust circle one another, canine in their desire; a dog and wolf eye-to-eye, ready to devote and to devour.

He’s vaguely aware of the book being dropped on the bed somewhere to his left, but his attention is seized by Remus, who tangles a hand in his hair and pulls him up, any former hesitation gone.

Remus fucks Sirius desperately, until there’s no space left in his lungs for anything other than his name.

Remus, he chants, head flung back against the mattress. Above him, Remus’s breath comes in hoarse gasps and stuttered, stilted words that Sirius can’t understand as his hips snap forward again and again and again.

The next morning, he wakes Remus up with open-mouthed kisses to his collarbone and takes him slowly in his mouth as the sun starts to rise. The night before, it was as though they were against a timer, their touches fast and desperate as if it was their last night on earth. Now, in the haze of the early morning, they have all the time in the world.

Their kisses are wet, warm, and messy, and Remus whimpers as Sirius grinds against him.

“You like that?” Sirius whispers, dragging his teeth across Remus’s collarbone.

“You know I do,” Remus says, words pressed against his temple as he pushes his cock against Sirius’s abdomen in slow, hard drags. “Shit.” His hips stutter before he’s grasping at Sirius and flipping them over.

Sirius gasps at the display of power, at the way trust is passed back and forth between them so seamlessly that he barely even notices it happening. Remus is only taking that which Sirius readily gives, but oh, does he give. Little does he know, I would give him everything.

The room is bathed in gold when Remus comes across his skin. As he trembles and falls apart in his arms, Sirius presses kisses to the side of his temple, I love you’s mouthed against sweat-slick curls.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Remus says breathily as Sirius drags his tongue across his jaw. If it was intended as part of a larger complaint, Sirius never gets to hear it. As he trails kisses down Remus’s body, Remus’s words turn into gasps, and his gasps into moans.

Sirius takes Remus into his mouth with his arms wrapped around the other man’s waist. Remus is folded in half over him, his hands grasping Sirius’s shoulders as if it’s all on the verge of too much. His stuttered pants come in short, sharp breaths near Sirius’s ear as he speaks in his garbled sentences that Sirius is coming to know well.

Sirius laces their fingers together, thinking that he never knew it was possible to feel this close to another person.

If only it was real.

He banishes that thought and sets his mind to showing Remus what he cannot yet say.

Later, they share a cigarette in bed, sheets rumpled, curtains billowing with warm night-time air.

“We really should make an effort to see some of the sights,” Remus says, although his heart doesn’t seem to be in it. At Sirius’s expression, he snorts. “Come on, at least a few of them. Two? Three?”

“Fuck the sights.”

Tomorrow, Sirius wants Remus to fuck him until he cries (again), and if Remus is amenable to it, he’d also like to try fingering him. They haven’t eaten a proper meal in days, so he might also attempt to persuade Remus into making his favourite pasta (this time minus sugar), the one meal he can be trusted not to burn (other than canned soup).

He has plans.

Remus laughs. Sirius blinks—he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“I feel honoured,” Remus says, absent-mindedly twirling a lock of Sirius’s hair around his forefinger. Sirius wants to climb him. “And I feel a little guilty. I’m being a terrible influence; we’re in Dracula country, you love vampires.”

“Vampires aren’t real,” Sirius says flippantly. “And the castles have a dubious claim to his name. At best.”

“Well... yes, true,” Remus acquiesces. “But the country’s beautiful. Brasov looks lovely. We’re only an hour away.”

“I like the view from the bedroom just fine.”

Remus laughs again. He suits laughter, Sirius thinks. He’d happily devote the rest of his life to making Remus laugh. He knows he’s a forest fire, but for Remus he could try to be a candle. Or a hearth. Or a well-behaved fire pit.

“We haven’t seen the sun in days,” Remus says, ever responsible. “We should go see the waterfall, at the very least. It’s a ten-minute walk according to the brochure.”

Sirius rolls his eyes, despite a wave of affection so strong he fears he may drown in it; of course Remus would gather his information from a brochure instead of the internet.

The air is thick with the sounds of life, of bugs and birds, and even distant farm animals down the lane. Around them, the trees are heavy with fruit, and Sirius can’t help plucking a plum from a hanging branch. The fruit is so ripe that it flows like a wound when he bites into it, red juice ribboning down his arm.

Remus rambles about the local moss species while Sirius stares at the column of his neck. It’s long, he notices, when Remus isn’t hunched over. He’s always curling into himself as if he’s trying to take up as little space as possible. It delights Sirius, the thought that Remus forgets to do that around him, that when it’s just the two of them he can simply be.

He remembers thinking that Remus suited Italy, but he suits it here too. He belongs in a forest, amongst the moss and leaves, with his tawny hair and fawn-like gaze.

He kicks at the path with his sandal. Sirius is more concerned for Remus’s shoe than the earth, which looks like it’s about to fall off his foot, the brown leather so worn and weathered it looks more suited to a museum.

Every now and again Sirius feels the itch of Remus’s eyes on him, but every time he looks up to meet them, he only catches the end of a glance. Nonetheless, beneath Remus’s curls Sirius is certain he can see the hint of a flush, a sight he thinks is hopelessly endearing, as is Remus’s inside-out shirt with its tag flapping in the breeze.

As his eyes drag hungrily across Remus’s form, he also notices that his freckles have gotten darker over the course of their trip. And Sirius has tasted them. Numerous times. His mind wanders, then, thinking about how the freckles between Remus’s hipbones taste. And lower...

“Lovely weather,” Remus comments, pulling Sirius from his mind and its stream of utter filth. “I almost forgot how wonderful sunlight feels.”

Sirius feels suddenly, irrationally, unreasonably jealous of the sun and of the obvious fondness Remus holds for it.

Flipping his hair over his shoulder, feeling like a petulant child yet unable to help himself, Sirius says, “It’s nothing special.”

Remus’s head whips around in surprise, his expression equal parts bemusement and outrage.

“What? It’s too hot. And bright. I’d rather be in bed.”

Sirius doesn’t say, now that I know how your skin feels against mine, even the sun’s warmth pales in comparison. And despite his thoughts making him feel nauseous with their saccharine sentiments, he can’t find it in himself to regret them, because they’re true, every single one of them.

“You can’t be serious,” Remus admonishes, before pausing, his eyes going wide. “Wait—don’t answer that.”

Sirius can’t help the sly tucking-up of his mouth. “I’m always—” he starts, before his words are cut short as Remus darts forward to cover Sirius’s mouth with his hand.

Sirius stares up at him, eyes wide in surprise, before the surprise fades and he melts into the touch. He chances one small lick, teasing Remus’s palm with his tongue.

“Sirius,” Remus says warningly, despite the sudden hoarseness of his voice.

And when has Sirius ever obeyed a warning? He feels satisfaction, or something akin to it, burn within as he reaches up to hold Remus’s hand in place, licking from his palm to his middle finger. That feeling grows as he watches Remus’s cheeks flush, knowing that the sun has played no part in it. It’s all him.

Then, he steps back, releasing Remus’s hand, and putting space between them. It feels a gargantuan task when every cell in Sirius’s body calls for Remus’s, but Remus had seemed so excited about the waterfall and he doesn’t want to be the one to deprive him of it, or of the inevitable smile it’ll bring to his face—though he supposes the latter is purely selfish.

“Shall we?” he asks.

Remus doesn’t reply.

The air feels stretched thin between them as Remus stares back wordlessly, his gaze darting from Sirius’s lips to his eyes, to the nape of his neck, where he knows his shirt hangs low, exposing the mottled series of purple and yellowing marks from Remus’s mouth.

His thoughts turn hazy at the idea of Remus fucking him right here, in the middle of a forest on a bed of moss. Or, he thinks wildly, would Remus let Sirius fuck him? He pictures brown curls splayed across the forest floor and has to bite the inside of his cheek, hard, to ground himself in the present.

For a moment, it feels as though everything around has turned silent: the birds and bugs and even the wind, everything other than Sirius’s racing heart and Remus’s heaving breaths.

Remus’s gaze is heavy as he stares at him. Long eyelashes, honey eyes. Sirius wants to paint him. He belongs in a gallery, but Sirius wants him all for himself.

Sirius loves the way Remus bites his nails right down to the quick, just as he loves the look of concentration that sits on his face as he roughly drags his brush through his curls—his poor, precious curls. He loves the way he cares for his books, stroking their covers, cracking their spines, and dog-earing the pages, both at the top and the bottom.

“You do realise you can just underline things,” Sirius says as Remus shrugs.

“I don’t have a pencil,” he says, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “Plus, it’s quite fun. Like a treasure hunt; sometimes I don’t remember what quote struck me in the first place, so I get to search for it. And sometimes I discover new ones in the process.”

Remus looks so serious about this, so earnest, and Sirius can feel words rising up his throat like bile. It’s getting so difficult to push them back down, now. He has never, ever felt love like this. He didn’t know it was possible. How has this been sitting inside him, dormant, for so long?

He fills pages with sketches of Remus, and pages more with his words. I love you I love you I love you I love you. Over and over and over and over again. It’s spilling out of him, and he knows now that it’s only a matter of time before it makes itself known; as Remus smiles at him in the morning, the first thing he sees, sleepy and soft; as Remus pushes in; as Remus smiles at him, freckly, bespectacled, and beautiful, over the top of his novel.

He tried to toe the line in Budapest, tried to test their relationship’s natural parameters. There are secrets between them, Sirius has realised. Sirius is in love with him, and he can’t hold it in.

His heart expands—feeling too large for his chest, for his whole body—as he watches Remus, the late afternoon sunlight dancing across his skin, gold on gold. The white curtains blow in the breeze, suspended in the air above the bed like some heavenly apparition.

Sirius sits on a stool opposite the bed, graphite in hand. As Remus slumbers, he traces Remus’s scars across the page. His pencil follows the line of Remus’s jaw, the freckles across his shoulder, the scarred, worn skin of his abdomen, the sharp lines of his hipbones. His lower half is hidden beneath the white sheet, twisted around his legs as he sleeps, but Sirius has memorised every line of his form.

He pours every word he cannot say into the paper, until the sun has sluggishly made its way over the horizon and his graphite-smeared fingers ache. His hand hovers above the paper, and he swears he can feel the warmth emanating through the page, as if it were the real thing.

And only then does the real Remus wake.

It starts with a stretch, long gentle fingers reaching towards the ceiling. He stretches his legs too, and Sirius can hear something crack—his hip, most likely.

Sirius sits still and silent, clutching his sketchbook to his chest. He so badly wants to show Remus what he’s drawn. His heart is in his throat, pumping out so much love that he’s terrified he might choke.

But he can’t—he can’t. Not yet.

Not yet.

“I have a surprise,” Remus says, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. His hair is getting long, and shaggy.

“Want me to cut your hair?” Sirius asks suddenly.

Remus blinks up at him. “I, uh—sure.”

Sirius smiles, so fond it hurts. “Grand. Sorry, what’s your surprise? I got distracted.”

Remus straightens as if he is about to deliver a very important announcement. He pulls out his beat-up brick of a phone that is held together with gaffer tape, and fiddles around, before sliding it across the table.

Sirius’s heart thunders in his chest.

“It’s not much,” Remus starts, “and I know you said you don’t care—questionable connections to Dracula and all—but I figured you’ve done so much for us over this trip with organising all the accommodation and activities and everything, and this was the only way I knew how to give something back.” He takes a deep breath, before continuing, “and I’d feel truly awful if we came all the way to Romania and you didn’t get to see at least one vampire-related tourist attraction.” His cheeks are aflame and Sirius is speechless. “I know, it’s really nothing, but…”

“It’s not nothing,” Sirius manages. “It’s… this is really sweet, Remus.”

Remus clears his throat, looking flustered.

Bran castle is small—tiny, really. Both Sirius and Remus have to duck so as to not hit their heads on the doorways and ceilings. It’s nothing like some of the grander castles they have seen throughout the rest of the trip, with its rustic interiors and lack of ornamentation, but Sirius has never loved a place more.

Outside is the sprawling forest of the Transylvanian Alps, and he climbs the steps, giddy, happy to have Remus beside him even though they aren’t touching, because Remus arranged this for him. For him. Remus, who ignored every one of his protests, who knows better than anyone how Sirius covets his many copies of Dracula, brought him here. Remus, who doesn’t seem to understand why Sirius is so touched by this, blushing and turning his face every time Sirius repeats thank you, Moony.

They’re lagging behind the rest of the tour group, meandering, when Sirius pulls Remus into a small corridor that leads to the turret.

Remus opens his mouth to speak—to protest, by the look of his expression—when Sirius presses a finger to his lips.

“Shh,” he leans in, so close that Remus’s curls tickle his face. “I want to suck your blood.”

“Sirius,” Remus begins with a laugh that turns into a moan as Sirius bites down on the flesh of the nape of his neck, chasing the burn of the bite with his tongue, soothing.

“Sorry,” Sirius says, pulling back and wiping his mouth. “I couldn’t help myself. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

Remus doesn’t reply. His chest heaves, as if he’s run a marathon, his cheeks pink and eyes glossy. A glance down tells Sirius that he wasn’t the only one who enjoyed himself.

Remus’s cheeks are aflame as he follows the path of Sirius’s eyes, before he averts his eyes, embarrassed. “You make a convincing vampire,” he says, “It, er… it suits you.”

Sirius licks his lips. “How long do you think we’ve got?”

Remus’s eyes dart back to his. “I—what?”

Sirius crowds into him, lacing his arms around Remus’s neck, bringing them nose-to-nose. He licks the tip of Remus’s nose because he can’t help himself. Remus blinks, looking like a startled fawn.

“I’m dying to get to my knees. I need you in my mouth right fucking now,” Sirius whispers fiercely. “Think you can be quick?”

Remus’s mouth opens, and no sound comes out. Then, it closes. He bites his lip, eyes darting to the stairs of the turret.

Sirius grins, before dropping to his knees. He licks his lips as he unties the ratty shoelace holding Remus’s trousers up when an echoed laugh comes down the stairs. Remus scrambles to pull Sirius up from where he’s preparing to take Moony into his mouth, where he belongs, and forgets to retie the shoelace in their frantic flight from the corridor.

Sirius’s lungs burn from laughter in the gift shop, where Remus hurriedly pulls up his trousers that have fallen down and exposed his boxers, which are light brown and covered in bunnies.

“Shut up,” Remus hisses at him, bright red as he furiously re-ties the shoelace.

Remus’s next surprise finds them in Sighişoara, a bright and colourful medieval village with cobbled streets, surrounded by rolling hills.

He leads them past the citadel square and the clocktower, to a building with a gaudy painting of a vampire hanging over the door. Sirius takes in the sign and all the adjacent paraphernalia outside, t-shirts and lanyards with vampires and Vlad Tepes on them, before he turns to Remus, whose cheeks are flushed a bright red.

“Er,” Remus starts, looking down at his feet, hands fiddling with the fraying end of his belt. “Surprise, again?”

“Moony,” Sirius breathes. “Did you plan this?”

Remus’s blush deepens, somehow, and he looks away. Sirius doesn’t think he’s going to reply when he finally says, “I just, I—you know. I thought it might make you happy.”

I wish you’d stop saying things like that, Moony, Sirius thinks. It’s making it so difficult not to fall even more in love with you.

“That was godawful,” Remus says afterwards. “I think we got scammed.”

Vlad Dracul House—where Vlad the Impaler was allegedly born—is really just a room with a coffin, which a man in white facepaint and a bad wig had leapt out of a few awkward seconds after his cue.

The adjacent restaurant is as kitsch as the experience had been, dimly lit with dusty medieval interiors and fake cobwebs hanging from the sconces. Sirius loves it.

“Hush,” Sirius says. “That was the best thing I’ve ever seen. This is the best place I’ve ever been.” He grins at Remus, and then at the animatronic puppet Dracula that hangs over the entrance. “Do you think they’re hiring? Imagine getting to lunge at tourists from a coffin every day and calling it a job. That’s the dream.”

Remus smiles behind his beer and shakes his head.

“What?” Sirius says, with his most shit-eating grin. “You said yourself that I made a convincing vampire.”

Remus rolls his eyes. “And I think your talents would be wasted on traumatising tourists. My back hurts even thinking about having to get in and out of that coffin once, let alone several times a day.”

“Old man,” Sirius teases. “All the more reason to do it when I’m young and spritely.”

“We’re nearly thirty.”

“Thirty is the new twenty. Anyway, my stamina’s never been better.” Sirius winks.

Remus flushes, muttering something under his breath that Sirius doesn’t quite catch, despite straining his ears to hear it.

The beer is followed by another, and another. And then wine.

The latest bar they’ve stumbled into is just below the fortress. They sit outside beneath an oak tree, looking out over the valley which is dotted with houses in shades of gold and yellow, a reflection of the sunset above.

Remus is hunched over in a bean bag, his long legs stretched out before him. He sips his sparkly pink cocktail, humming.

Sirius keeps catching himself staring, as well as the slow, smitten smile that stretches across his face, unbidden, and has to repeatedly shake himself out of it. The last thing he needs is for Remus to notice.

Though, says the voice at the back of his head that has become louder and more insistent with every day, would that really be the worst thing to happen? Would he truly be so repulsed by the depth of my affection?

Sirius looks at the man before him, his best friend of nearly two decades, and suddenly he’s not so sure. He knows it’s the alcohol in his system making his usually racing thoughts slow and easy to sift through, but with his thoughts like sand in his hands, slipping through his fingers, it’s not the scared and doubtful thoughts that remain with him. It’s the hopeful ones, the ones that say Remus has always treated him gently, even in their worst moments, so who’s to say he won’t do the same now?

“I love these wee things,” Remus says, jerking Sirius from his reverie. “What are they? Plum?” He bites into one of the golden fried balls, nodding happily, completely oblivious to the direction of Sirius’s thoughts.

Sirius must be quiet for longer than he realises because Remus looks up from his snacking with question in his eyes.

Nodding, Sirius smiles. “Plum,” he says, putting his thoughts to the side for now to enjoy Remus’s company.

“I’m so tipsy,” Remus says, rubbing his face. “Positively tippled. Topply turvy.”

Sirius laughs, stumbling into him, his body tingly with alcohol and joy. “I can’t drive. We’d end up in a ditch. Lily would bring me back to life to kill me all over again, and my mother would gatecrash my funeral because she’s always had a flair for drama—and mischief, though she’d never admit it—and James would run off with my coffin, because he knows it's what I would want, but he’d drop it because he wouldn’t see properly ‘cos his glasses would be fogged up from crying so hard, and then my body would roll down the steps of the church and onto the road and cause another car accident and it’d make international news and I’d be famous, finally, but for all the wrong reasons.” He sighs. “Yeah, no, we can’t have that. Best to find a place to bunk up here.”

Remus stares at him, eyes so wide and brown, framed with thick lashes, as he sways slightly, from side to side. “I have no idea what you just said.”

Sirius’s laugh is loud and sharp—more akin to a bark, really. “I can’t believe I met a vampire today, Moons.”

Remus snorts, an unattractive sound. “He only had one fang. His wig almost fell off. You in your leather jacket with your whole,” he waves his hand around, motioning at Sirius’s general form, “thing is a much more convincing vampire than he ever was.”

“Interesting. Want me to bite you again?” Sirius teases, nudging him with his shoulder. “You seemed to like it the first time.”

Remus’s laugh comes too quickly to be natural. “We’re in public, Padfoot.”

“We were in public then, too.”

“And now we’re on the street.” Remus’s cheeks are flushed, and oh, how Sirius adores him.

“And I want to kiss you on the street.”

Remus’s cheeks turn red. His mouth opens and closes, but no words come out.

Sirius takes his chance, moving in closer, stepping into Remus’s personal space. “Can I kiss you, Moony?”

Remus stares, his chest heaving. He makes a vaguely pained noise before he grasps Sirius by the collar and hauls him in, mouth devouring Sirius’s with a kiss as dirty as it is lovely.

They stumble back, scuffling across the cobblestones until Sirius’s back collides with a building. Something pointy digs into his back, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know how long they stand there, grasping at each other. Whenever they’re like this, close enough to touch, Sirius loses all his grasp on time.

Eventually, Remus pulls back, his heaving breaths stirring the hair at Sirius’s neck, tickling. “Take me to bed, Sirius.” He winds a lock of Sirius’s hair around his finger and tugs.

“We don’t have a bed,” Sirius says, voice rough.

Remus pulls back, eyes glazed, looking oh-so-sweet. “Then let’s find one.”

They practically fall through the door of the nearest hotel. The man at the desk looks half asleep, but when the door slams shut, he jolts upright.

“A room for two, please,” Remus says, putting on his polite voice that always charms the nans. Sirius has his doubts about how well it’ll work now, given how debauched Remus looks.

Still, its effect is immediate. The attendant—Gheorghe, his name tag reads—has dark curls peppered with grey, and eyes the colour of chocolate, which light up at the sound of Remus’s voice.

“Of course, of course,” he says, his voice as warm and rich as his eyes. “How many beds?” he asks, but before they can reply, squinting down at the ledger before him, he says, “oh, I’m sorry, we only have the queen room available. I hope that’s no inconvenience? We could have a cot made up if you’d like.”

Sirius waves a hand. “No need,” he says, wrapping his other arm around Remus’s shoulders. “Like a brother to me, this one.”

Remus snorts, elbowing him in the side.

Gheorghe grins. “Perfect, perfect. First, let me show you around. We’ll be quick, yes?”

“And here’s the drink station,” Gheorghe says, gesturing to a group of kettles. “Tea, hot chocolate, whatever takes your fancy.”

“Yum,” Sirius says, squeezing Remus’s arse with one hand. Remus leaps a metre into the ear, letting out a strangled yelp.

Gheorghe pauses, looking back at them. “Everything okay?” He is so kind and so lovely. And Sirius really, really wants him to go away.

“Good,” Sirius nods. “Great even. Actually, I’m dying for a piss, so I think we might just head to the room.”

Remus nods sharply beside him. “Thank you for the tour, Gheorghe.”

They don’t wait to hear his response before leaping up the stairs. Remus stumbles just before the top, and Sirius catches him, laughing.

“Sore hip,” Remus says by way of explanation.

“Old man Moony,” Sirius teases, pushing further into Remus’s space to nose at his throat. “Careful. We need your hips intact.”

Remus sighs, leaning into the touch. Then, he’s pulling away, walking backwards down the hall.

Sirius has to drag his eyes away from him to check the room numbers. It feels like a Herculean feat, but somehow he manages it. Stepping into the room, he doesn’t even look around before he drags Remus in and kicks the door closed, sealing it shut.

For a moment, neither one of them speaks. Neither one of them moves where they’re tangled up in each other. Between them, their shared breaths disturb the air.

“I got you a bed,” Sirius whispers.

Remus’s hand clenches where it’s tangled in the hair at the nape of Sirius’s neck. “You did.” His eyes flick down to Sirius’s lips, then back up. “Do you… hm.” He bites his lip, trailing off.

Sirius squeezes Remus gently where his arms are wound around his shoulders. “What is it, Rem?”

Remus’s eyes flick back to his, wide, uncertain, but wanting. “Would you mind if we switched?”

It takes Sirius several moments to understand what Remus is asking him, but once he does he nods so quickly and vigorously that it twinges something in his neck, sharp and painful, but he ignores it in favour of— “Yes, yeah. Of course. I would—I’d love that.”

Remus’s lips tug up into a small smile. He motions towards the bed with his head. “Shall I, um.”

Sirius exhales. They’ve been fucking non-stop in every room of their cottage for days, but now he feels nervous, overwhelmed. It feels like their first time all over again. His brain is bubbling, overflowing, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

So he does the only thing that feels right at that moment and kisses Remus. The moment their lips touch Remus whimpers, melting, curling himself into Sirius’s body, and Sirius is hit again with the feeling of rightness that he only gets when Remus is close.

And he can’t stop touching him now that they’re pressed together again, the way they belong. He strokes his cheek, his brow, his temple.

Remus tries to lean into his hand while also pushing into the kiss which has them stumbling towards the bed. They fall to the mattress, but neither of them lets go. Remus’s hand clenches in the hair at the back of Sirius’s head as his leg winds around his waist, holding him in place.

Sirius peppers kisses everywhere his lips can touch. Lips, nose, eyelids. He drags kisses down Remus’s jaw, down his throat, over his bobbing Adam’s apple.

Remus sighs into the touch, hands gentle on Sirius’s shoulders. Beneath him, Remus looks more vulnerable than Sirius is used to seeing him, and it makes him want to hold Remus close, to guard him like a dog.

Sirius is moving lower, lower, his tongue tracing the valleys of Remus’s scarred abdomen as his fingers fiddle with his makeshift belt, when he’s suddenly yanked back by his hair. He gasps, his mouth dropping open involuntarily, eyes fluttering shut at the sensation, the sharp pain cascading into pleasure.

When he opens his eyes again, it’s to see a flushed Remus, his chest rising and falling. “Sorry,” he breathes, slowly releasing his hold on Sirius’s hair.

Sirius gazes up at him through his lashes, feeling so warm and tingly he could combust. “Don’t be.”

“Just—” Remus starts, all rumpled curls and amber eyes dark with desire, as he moves out of Sirius’s reach and scoots up the bed. Then he’s rolling onto his knees, back arched and hips in the air. He looks over his shoulder, bitten lips begging to be taken. Sirius’s pulse thunders. “Like this.”

“Whatever you want, Moons,” Sirius promises, voice coarse. He crawls up, crowding behind Remus, unable to help himself as he nuzzles and nips at the nape of his neck, pressing further into the scent of rosemary and skin, rubbing himself in it.

He takes his time removing Remus’s clothes, kissing every inch of skin and every scar that is unveiled. He tears into the pouch of lube with his teeth, coating his fingers, never pulling away from Remus more than he has to.

He leans forward, turning Remus’s face toward him with his un-lubed hand. Remus’s lips are so pliant beneath his, and when he starts stroking his fingertip over Remus’s hole, he starts letting out these keening noises that drive Sirius mental.

Remus drops his head to his arms, back arching and gasping, as Sirius rubs his nose at his skin, crooking a finger, experimenting. Remus reaches around and winds a hand between them, under Sirius’s shirt, feeling at his abdomen as though he’s tracing Sirius’s tattoos from memory.

“Yeah?” he says, pressed to the nape of Remus’s neck.

“More,” Remus gasps as he tries to move against Sirius’s hand, trying to alter the speed and roughness, uncharacteristically impatient.

When he inserts another finger, Remus twists around where his head is resting on his arms, his dark eyes now fixed on Sirius. “Now.”

Sirius crooks his fingers again, relishing the shudder that passes through Remus’s body. Mouth open and panting, he says, “Sirius. Now.”

“Bossy,” Sirius teases, stroking Remus’s insides with his fingers, relishing in the way Remus bucks against him as if he can’t help himself.

“Jesus christ, Padfoot, fuck me already,” Remus says, and although the words are authoritative, they’re delivered with a sharp edge of desperation that has Sirius’s insides burning.

“You’re so gorgeous,” Sirius says, pressing a kiss to Remus’s shoulder blades as he reluctantly removes his fingers, drags his shirt over his head.

As he gets himself ready, Remus watches, head tilted and eyes trained over his shoulder. He doesn’t blink, and his gaze doesn’t waver.

Sirius is used to feeling wanted. He’s never felt it quite like this before.

“You ready, darling?” he murmurs.

Despite his earlier mouthiness, Remus simply nods.

When Sirius lines himself up, he can’t look away from Remus’s face, his eyes, as honey melts into grey. When he pushes in, Remus’s mouth drops open as Sirius breathes out, “Remus.”

Remus lets out a choked moan, before burying his face in his arms, as though overcome. Immediately missing the warmth of his eyes, Sirius leans forward, sucking the side of Remus’s throat, licking the skin there, pressing kisses everywhere his lips can reach.

Remus is hot and impossibly tight around him. He keeps his movements slow, savouring every sensation, and everything that Remus gives him.

Muffled by where his face is buried in his arms, Sirius can just make out Remus’s soft, keening noises, and that just won’t do—he wants to hear everything, needs to hear everything.

He leans forward, winding an arm around Remus and pulling him impossibly closer, hand splaying across his stomach and its rough scars. The thought that others, that Benjy has seen Remus like this makes Sirius feel a little bit insane. It makes his thrusts a little rougher, his grip a little tighter, his licks and kisses a little more biting.

He desperately wants to flip Remus over and stare into his eyes as he fucks him—to make sure that he’s the only person in Remus’s mind right now. He doesn’t want Remus to forget who is fucking him.

“Remus, you’re so tight,” he says, and Remus replies with a moan. “Fuck.”

“Harder,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper, and Sirius obeys.

His mouth lets out an endless stream of nonsense—filth, praise and reverence—as if the tight heat of Remus around his cock has severed all connection between his brain and mouth, and any semblance of self-control.

“You’re so gorgeous, so perfect. Fuck, Remus, Moony, baby, I’m—you’re so—”

Remus suddenly lets out a loud choked-off moan, shuddering. His body quivers beneath Sirius as he clamps down around his cock, rolling his hips and rocking back against him slowly as if he’s riding out an orgasm.

Then, he stills.

“Sorry,” Remus croaks. “Sorry, I—sorry.”

“Shh, don’t apologise.” He hugs Remus’s now-lax body closer, kissing his neck. “That was so fucking hot.”

“I’m just—I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry, you’re still—”

“Don’t worry about me darling,” Sirius says into Remus’s hair, nuzzling into the curls. “I’m over the fucking moon.” He chuckles, rubbing his nose against Remus’s shoulder. “Over the moon, my Moony.”

He moves to pull out, when Remus’s hand whips out, grasping his hip and holding him in place. “Wait,” he pants. “You can still—I.” He turns his head, finally locking eyes with Sirius. “Don’t stop. Please.”

Sirius flips him over. He has to see him, and now that they’re face to face, he can see that Remus’s cheeks are flushed. He bites his lip, as if to hold back his moans. He’s half hard against his stomach, chest spotted with come.

Sirius forces himself to stay still, drinking in Remus’s appearance, how unravelled and unwound he looks, how utterly fucking gorgeous.

Remus bites his lip, and Sirius’s hips cant forward involuntarily. Remus throws his arm across his mouth, to muffle his moan.

Sirius reaches up, winding their fingers together, and coaxing Remus’s arm back down to the pillow beside his head. “Let go, baby. Don’t hold back.”

Remus’s face crumples at the pet name as he lets out a whining gasp.

Sirius rolls his hips forward, unable to take his eyes off Remus. “Just like that.”

“Sirius,” Remus slurs. “Sirius.”

“Feel like heaven, Moony,” Sirius murmurs, leaning forward to nip and press kisses to Remus’s adam’s apple, to lick the sweat collected in his collarbone.

He takes his time taking Remus apart and feels himself hopelessly unwinding at the seams. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Remus like this before. Not drunk, not high, not even during the many, many other times they’ve fucked on this trip so far. He’s never silent during sex—he gasps and utters filthy words that make Sirius melt. But he’s still controlled.

But here, in their tiny hotel room, he finally lets go.

He clings to Sirius, grips his arms, drags his fingernails down Sirius’s arms before tangling their fingers together. He’s touchy, so touchy. Remus’s touch is usually curious, sometimes possessive, but never like this; never clingy, never desperate. He moans and shudders and gasps, so responsive, so sensitive.

The look in Remus’s brown eyes is heartbreaking. It’s tender, familiar. Sirius is sure he’s seen glimpses of it over the years, but never anything solid; a flash of gold, there one minute, gone the next. Now, it’s right before him, and he would stop the world to keep that expression on Remus’s face.

He slows his thrusts, never ever wanting the moment to end. Moonlight pours through the curtains as he slowly, slowly rolls his hips into Remus.

Remus untangles their fingers and wraps his hand around the back of Sirius’s neck. Pulling him close, forehead to forehead, nose to nose.

They pass their breath back and forth, and then their names. Sirius, Remus. Sirius, Remus. Sirius, Remus.

Remus comes again, his face crumpling, eyes squeezing shut, and Sirius watches, awed, until he’s following. Remus’s arms wind around his neck, holding him close, tight, keeping him steady as he rides out the seemingly endless waves of his orgasm until his mind is less fuzzy and his eyes are no longer full of stars.

Remus doesn’t let go; not when the waves of pleasure have dissipated, and not when the come between them cools. They stay like that, wound together under the sheets.

In the afterglow, Remus’s eyes hold a tenderness that Sirius has only ever caught glimpses of before. Now, it lingers, and his fingers wander, and Sirius shivers under his attention, praying that the moment never, ever ends. He’d give just about anything to stay here with Remus forever, tangled amongst the sheets in their hotel room in Transylvania. He’d give his legs, his lungs, his heart, his soul; no trade would be too great.

Remus noses at the nape of his neck. Sirius wonders if he can hear how hard his heart is beating.

“I don’t want to end up like my Dad,” Remus confesses softly.

“You won’t,” Sirius promises.

“I can see it happening, though, is the thing.” Remus’s words are pressed, whisper-light, against Sirius’s skin. “Sometimes it feels inevitable.”

“What do you mean?”

Remus just shakes his head.

Sirius thinks of Lyall, all alone in Wales: sad and too stubborn to tell his son how much he loves him.

Sirius thinks of his mother and the way she lashed out like a caged dog when threatened. He thinks of her until her features blend into his, and he can’t tell the difference between them any more. I am my mother’s son. The words sit in his chest like a leaden weight. His greatest shame, his greatest fear. He’s terrified to let them free—terrified that once he says them, Remus will see it too. That he’ll start to see the same in Sirius that Sirius sees in himself.

The room feels like a liminal space, their bodies intertwined between the sheets under a roof that doesn’t know them, so Sirius sets his fears free.

“I can see myself in my mother,” he says.

Remus lifts his head. His eyes are dark, but his expression is one of disbelief. “Sirius… you don’t really think that, do you?”

“I have her temper.”

Remus continues to stare, unwavering. “You’re passionate. Determined. She’s... well. She’s just cruel.”

“I can be cruel,” Sirius says.

“But you aren’t.”

“How cruel do you have to be before it’s who you are?”

“You’re not your mother, Sirius.”

“But I could be.”

“Never,” Remus says, and Sirius is taken aback by the vehemence in his voice.

Sirius doesn’t know what to say. Finally, he lands on: “You’re not Lyall.” But Remus’s sad expression isn’t going anywhere, so he continues: “I’d never let that happen. I’d never abandon you.”

Remus’s bottom lip quivers. “I promised myself that I’d never abandon him, but, well...”

Sirius stares at him, at he tears welling in Remus’s eyes. It’s wrong, so wrong; he put those tears there, he made Remus cry.

“Remus,” he tries again, but he’s just making it worse, isn’t he?

“It’s late,” Remus says, his voice a gentle whisper.

Outside, Sirius can hear the first stirrings of the morning—distant cars and birds rising with the dawn—but he doesn’t want the night to end, with this new closeness between them. He doesn’t want to go to sleep and wake up unstitched from Remus’s side.

Three words hang from the very tip of his tongue. He licks his lips, wetting the skin, priming it, when Remus closes his eyes.

Soon, he promises himself. Soon.

In the morning, Remus is oddly sedate. It’s hardly anything out of the ordinary—sometimes it can take a whole pot of coffee and two people to get Remus out of bed—but Sirius finds himself picking the quicks of his thumbs raw anyway.

Those three little words had nearly slipped from his lips last night. Does Remus know? Is that why he’s avoiding Sirius’s gaze?

He’ll get his answer soon enough, he supposes. Soon, it’ll be just the two of them, back in the cottage, and everything will feel familiar again.

The drive home is quiet and meandering. Remus curls into himself, facing away from Sirius. Sirius clenches the steering wheel so hard the leather creaks.

As he drives, he finds himself frowning up at the sun. Why does it have to spoil everything? Why does everything have to feel different in the light of the morning?

He worries the inside of his lip as his eyes flick over to Remus, whose expression is as difficult to navigate as a maze made of stone. Sirius finds himself lost in the slight downturn of his lips, wondering what it means and what has got him frowning like that.

“Alright, Moony?” he tries.

Remus blinks, startled, before settling his features into a neutral expression. “Just tired,” he says, closing his eyes.

Sirius clenches the wheel and drives.

It’s dark by the time they get back. They stopped by another town on the way, where the strange quiet between them had held.

At lunch, Remus had repeated the same words as earlier: “I’m just tired, Pads,” he said. And Sirius wanted to believe him, but he also couldn’t help noticing the way Remus carefully avoided his gaze, distancing himself so that they never touched.

He knows Remus gets into his moods sometimes, and he knows that he needs his space and time and quiet. So Sirius bites his tongue, so hard it bleeds, and gives it to him. Maybe all they need is a bit of familiarity?

Only as soon as they’re back in the cottage, Remus peers down at his phone, frowning. “I’ve got to make a call, be right back,” he murmurs, seemingly unaware of his surroundings as he stumbles into the bedroom and closes the door.

Sirius waits. He sits on the couch, stiff-backed like a dog—all he’s missing is a collar and a leash.

He waits until Remus’s hushed voice on the other side of the wall goes quiet, and finally silent, before he knocks on the door. There’s no reply.

“Moony?” Sirius asks, gently pushing the door open. “Moons, I—”

Remus is sitting on the bed, staring down at his phone. His expression is pained, so obviously so, and the rest of Sirius’s sentence melts away from his tongue. Then, he notices the wetness on Remus’s cheeks, and all the air leaves his chest. “Remus. Remus, what’s wrong?”

Remus’s bottom lip wobbles, and Sirius swears he feels his heart break. “Da’s nurse called,” he says.

Sirius stumbles towards him. “Did—is. Is everything okay?”

“I need to—” Remus tries, still staring at his lap where he’s wringing his hands. “He’s refusing to go. He—he doesn’t want…”

“Remus,” Sirius says, stunned, unsure what else to say. What else can he say to that? “Refusing to go where?”

“Hospice,” Remus says, voice brittle like cracked glass. “The nurse was talking about putting him in a home, said we really need to look at palliative care, because things are getting… well. But he won’t go. Refuses. He says he doesn’t need help.”

“Do you need to leave? I’ll come,” Sirius promises. “Remus, I’ll come with you. I can book our flights, I’ll do it now, anything—”

Remus chews his lip, which already looks sore and raw. Sirius wants to reach out and put his finger between Remus’s teeth and skin and tell him to treat himself gently.

“What can I do?” he asks instead, feeling utterly helpless. “I’ll do it. Anything. Truly.”

Remus shakes his head. “Just…” he says, his fingers twitching in his lap. “Just stay.”

“Moony,” Sirius says, reaching for him. “Of course.” He draws Remus to his chest, hugging him close, internally cursing Lyall for making Remus cry, and cursing cancer, cursing life, for making him hurt. He knows it’s not fair to blame Lyall, but at that moment Sirius really, truly hates him.

Remus holds on tight, too tight, his nails scratching at Sirius through his shirt as his body is racked by horrible, broken sobs, and Sirius hugs him even harder.

They fall asleep like that. Remus first, his sobs easing into sniffles, and Sirius after.

At one point during the night, he stirs, feeling Remus peel away from Sirius’s arms. He reaches out, his fingers meeting Remus’s.

“Just going to the bathroom,” Remus whispers. “Go back to sleep, Pads.” He presses a kiss to Sirius’s temple.

Tomorrow, Sirius thinks, nuzzling back into his pillow. Tomorrow he’ll tell Remus, but for now, he’ll just let him rest.

Sirius’s love is old, and it’s not going anywhere. It can wait.

It can wait.

When morning light fills the room, Sirius stretches, his limbs sore and tight from tension. He thinks of his Moony, and his heart hurts for him.

“Remus,” he says, yawning, reaching out for warm skin, but all he feels is a cool pillow.

He cracks his eyes open, taking in the rumpled sheets before him, and the open bathroom door.

His heart races. Something feels off. Wrong.

It’s fine, he tells himself. It’s fine. He’s just gotten up early.

He looks around, panic quickly mounting. When he sees it, he swears he feels something fracture in his chest.

Remus’s suitcase is gone.