Older And Between
He'd been planning to knock. Would've given him time to collect his thoughts, to figure out what the fuck he was going to say. Maybe to sit around outside and figure out what the fuck he was going to say, and then knock. Or maybe not knock, maybe just stride right in, because after all, it's his bloody house, isn't it? It's on his offer that Remus is staying there. Shouldn't he be able to just walk on inside?
What kind of idiot is sitting outside at two AM in the middle of a bloody war, anyway? Is Remus trying to get himself killed? The wizarding world's distrust of werewolves is great enough as it is, what if word gets out that he's taken to sitting outside in the middle of the night, what then?
"You're only angry," Remus says when Sirius expresses this concern, "because I ruined your grand entrance."
"You've always been too smart for your own damn good," Sirius retorts, sitting down at the table.
"You're out at two AM in the middle of a war," Remus points out, sitting down not opposite from Sirius but right bloody next to him, like they were children in the Great Hall again, too afraid that someone would catch on to even look at each other.
"I'm a wanted criminal." Which brings them 'round to the point quite nicely, doesn't it?
Remus and Sirius look at each other now, and Lupin stands, walks into the kitchen for a few moments, and returns with two bottles of firewhiskey. Sirius takes one of the bottles gratefully, and doesn't comment on the fact that Remus has sat down across from him now.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Remus asks, and his voice is quiet and low and smooth, forced into a quiet low smoothness that Sirius knows quite well to be a sign that Remus is angry and hurting and needs only a little push before hell breaks loose.
Sirius shrugs, and takes a swig from his bottle. "Remus," he says with a smirk, "if you didn't know I was a wanted bloody criminal after more than a decade of my being the most hated man in wizarding England, you probably deserve whatever you get for being out there in the middle of the night."
In the second before he pushes himself up from the table, Sirius knows that he has pushed, just as he intended to, and before Remus can say anything, he says quickly, in a conciliatory tone, "Because we thought you were the traitor."
Remus does not move, does not strangle Sirius, and does not sit. "Why would you think that?"
"Because you were the last one to join our group before Lily came along, because your friendship with James came later, because you're smarter than any of us and because we didn't think that Wormtail had the imagination or the intelligence to turn away from a losing cause." Sirius says it all smoothly and honestly and entirely conversationally. "Why did you think I was the traitor?"
"Because you've always been a bit of a bully, because we knew that Snape had just switched sides, and whatever side he was on you didn't want to be on, because then you'd have to cooperate with him, and because it's always been a fucking game to you," Remus answers, his voice less controlled, less smooth, less conversational, but no less honest.
"Those are stupid reasons," Sirius said, and wasn't sure whether drinking more firewhiskey would enhance the calm cool I don't give a fuck image or betray it. Then he decided that he really didn't give a fuck, not about that, anyway, he just needed a drink, and sucks more down greedily.
Remus is staring -- eyeing -- leering -- bloody looking at him, and there are more fucking emotions on his face than can be physically possible, let alone put into a few words, so it's just blank. "Yours aren't much better."
"In retrospect, no."
"Goddamnit, Sirius!" Remus finally shouts. That is all that he says, and the words hang in the air then; the echo seems to cling and linger 'round them.
That is all -- just goddamn it, and nothing more, and Sirius, perhaps inappropriately, remembers other times that Remus has shouted his name. It's been fucking years, can anyone really blame him for wanting a little action?
Slowly, he rises himself, and faces Remus -- leaner, slightly more lined Remus, whose hair is thinner and lanker and duller, whose eyes are colder and harder and whose muscles stand out more -- faces Remus across the table, stares into Remus's eyes. Neither of them will flinch, he knows, neither will turn away, neither will give in, and they could go all bloody night like this.
And although he's not really surprised, this isn't how he fucking wanted to spend their first real night together in thirteen fucking years.
"Neither of us was the traitor," he whispers, and his own voice is harsh even to him. "It wasn't either of us, and we didn't figure it out until it was too late. It drove us apart, and that's just what Voldemort wanted, and James and Lily are dead." And then, even as the condensation on the bottle has made his left hand wet, he reaches out with his right, buries it in Lupin's thinner hair, and kisses him.
"Sirius," Remus breathes against his lips, and kisses him back, and his soft lips are still soft, but they feel tougher and thinner somehow. "Sirius," Remus says again, and with that breath against his lips, all the blood in Sirius's body has somehow managed to Apparate down to his cock. The bottle slides from his hand and rolls across the floor, and he kisses Remus again, trying to reach across to him -- reach across a fucking chasm.
"Remus," Sirius tries to say in that same tone, and fails miserably at trying to be sexy -- he just sounds like he's starving, like he's having trouble breathing, and he is, just a little bit.
And then Remus pulls back. Not all the way back, not even far back, he's still close enough that he can fucking smell Remus, and he smells darker than he used to, smells tired and dark and like Remus.
When he's a dog, the smell of Remus will assault him. Dog eyesight isn't as good as human, which is why it's a good thing that their sense of smell is stronger, and he loved to be Padfoot just so he could smell Remus.
Nothing smelt bad when he was Padfoot, really. Everything smelt strong, but nothing bad, though some scents were better than others. The smell of Remus was fucking glorious, though, and it would invariably drive him to turn back into Sirius and fuck Remus through the mattress.
But this is good enough -- smelling Remus, the smell of older tired Remus is more than enough... for these few seconds.
"You're a fucking idiot," Remus says, and his voice is quiet and very, very angry and soft and rough and too fucking hot for Sirius to give a fuck.
"I am," Sirius agrees and kisses a soft spot on Remus's throat, just too far down for there to be stubble, though some of the roughness scrapes at Sirius's nose. "And you're fucking a fucking idiot," he adds, and tries to catch some of that soft skin between his teeth.
"A fucking idiot with lousy fucking grammar," Remus responds. "We're not currently fucking."
Sirius grins, grabs Remus's shirt and is quite close to pulling him across the table. "I can fix that."
"I'm sure -- " He is cut off when Sirius kisses his mouth again, hard and brutal and the stubble rubs against his own night-rough chin this time. Sirius's body, it seems, is intent on ignoring the fact that there's a fucking table between the two of them. Remus's mouth tastes vaguely like the sip or two of firewhiskey he had, and below that is the taste of Remus, the taste that he'd forgotten about because it's been thirteen bloody years of eating rats and starving and hiding.
He leans as far as he can, and his hands are sliding roughly down Remus's arms, over his hands. Remus's hands seem thicker as he turns them over, lets Sirius trace his palms with fingertips even as he's trying to drink him in from the inside of his mouth out, and Sirius realizes with a start that it is not that Remus is bigger, but rather that the combined years in Azkaban and on the run have made him bonier.
The palms of Remus's hands feel almost exactly as they once did, and the wand-callouses on his right thumb and the side of his index knuckle are slightly thicker, slightly harder, slightly tougher. His tongue reacts at last, pushing back at Sirius, and yet he's pulling back, forcing Sirius to lean further and furthur across the table.
It's only by millimeters, maybe centimeters, but there's a table between them, and that makes it just a little bit difficult. Sirius can take it no more, and he deepens the kiss further to anchor himself as he clambers onto the the stupid goddamn table and clear across it.
They are both thrown off-balance when he climbs down, for Remus moves too slowly, and Sirius dismounts too quickly, and he stumbles, grabs the nearest thing, and since this happens to be Remus's shirt, ends up pulling the other man down with him. Remus swears as his forehead grazes the edge of the table, and Sirius smiles vaguely at the sound, one that he's never heard in anything but the greatest passion and behind tightly-closed doors. The other man kisses him, then, with a new fervor, a new hunger, undoubtedly seeks to coax thirteen years' worth of answers, apologies or explanations off of Sirius's reluctant tongue.
He'll find nothing there, of course, and they both know it, nothing but the taste of firewhiskey.
Sirius undoes the clasp on Remus's cloak, for he has kept it on, as though he's cold or does not plan to be here long. Remus, for himself, is ignoring Sirius' clothes, sliding his hands beneath the white Muggle shirt. They feel stronger than they used to, and Sirius realizes anew that he must somehow have diminished in the years that have passed, though time has also stripped away much of Remus's quiet playfulness and left only quiet, and much of his tenderness seems to have vanished with each of the thousands of days that have gone by.
When Remus dips his head, Sirius stifles the urge to give a little growl of irritation -- he is only half-done with Remus's buttons, for he has been slowly re-acquanting his hands with every tiny little fucking bit of flesh exposed. He is taken aback by the softness with which Remus kisses his lean belly, just below his navel, and wonders if the world has suddenly turned upside-down and he does not realize it.
And for these moments, these confusing, strange moments, he is strangely content to lay his head back, to simply bury one of his hands in Remus's hair as the other man unbuttons and slides away the layers of clothing with a confusing, strange sweetness, and lays strangely mild kisses on the newly-bared skin. Feels Remus smile then, against his belly. It does not feel the same as that smile did once, but Sirius has little time to consider the implications of the difference, for barely a moment later, Remus's mouth is on his cock.
It feels so much better than years of imagining and remembering could ever feel, because this is really Remus's mouth, and that, that hotter wetter rougher bit of his mouth that's dragging along the underside of Sirius's cock, that is really Remus's tongue. This is not a memory that will fade into screams and fears when the dementors come near, this is not some fantasy that will leave Sirius in the same bloody cave with a sticky spot in front of him to avoid sitting in for awhile. There is the barest, slightest scrape of teeth along his length, just for an instant, and Sirius hisses as his hand tightens in Remus's hair. It will, he thinks, take barely any time at all at this rate.
Somehow, the bastard still knows, the same as he ever did. When Sirius is only a fucking hair away from bursting, from fucking exploding, Remus pulls his mouth away and kisses Sirius's lips instead. Sirius can taste himself on Remus's lips, and thrusts his hips upward towards Remus's still fucking clothed ones angrily. But Remus thrusts right back, and grinds, fucking grinds as well, going one better. His lashes are lowered, but there isn't a sign in his face that he's playing the tease as he used to love to do.
Remus's hands pin his wrists then, and they go 'round Sirius's wrists so much more easily, it seems, and Remus kisses him again, this time so fucking gently and tenderly that it makes him want to strangle the other man, because Sirius knows he's being fucking mocked, or played with, or possibly both.
Except that Remus whispers something then, and first Sirius strains to hear it, but then he feels a quick cool flash against his hips, through Remus's clothing. He thrusts his hips again, but Remus does not thrust back, and Sirius knows that it's because his clothing will just ruin the spell by rubbing off the lubrication.
Remus meets Sirius's eyes then, and stares at him, hard and steely, for a few moments, and then slowly draws his hands away from Sirius's wrists. Sirius quickly finishes what Remus started, pulling the rest of his own clothes off, as Remus quickly undoes the remaining buttons on his robes and casts them aside. The two of them regard each other then, the looks they share somewhat less hard, and slowly, Sirius moves his legs, bending his knees up. Remus's hands are on Sirius's knees then, and they still regard each other silently, in a manner that is strange in the context of still more strangeness, for it is familiar.
It is not simply a slightly softened version of the steely looks they have occasionally thrown each other; it's fucking tender in the midst of a realization that perhaps they have not changed so very much after all.
He has the vaguest, briefest sense that Remus has leaned in, towards his face -- just a sense, because he pulls back almost instantly.
And then Remus is in him, sliding further in with each passing heartbeat. Yet somehow, it seems to take for-fucking-ever, and Sirius cannot help but give a low, frustrated noise in his throat.
After that noise escapes, hangs in the air like a prism, there is a moment where Remus doesn't move at all, only stares hard at Sirius. Then a drop of his sweat, which Sirius realizes he had tracked unconsciously throughout its whole path down Remus's face, falls, and splashes onto Sirius's chest at the instant that the prism shatters, too, and Remus begins to fuck him in earnest.
It has been so long that Remus's cock feels a little strange this time around, that the motion takes longer for Sirius to adjust to than it did nearly any time before, save those first few shameful, frightening (he'd never admit how fucking terrifying) interludes in empty dorms and closets. Sirius's left hand scrabbles for some purchase on the wood of the floor, the wood that's been scraped by years of feet and chairs and boots and pets, as his right wraps around his own cock.
It does not take him long, and to his own ears, Sirius's soft grunts are much the same as they were.
Remus's voice, when he gives a tight soft moan that might be Sirius's name and spills himself within, is just the same as it ever was before.
As they lay there, each others' sweat still coating them and drying rapidly, Remus pulls out and mutters "That didn't exactly resolve things."
"No, it didn't," Sirius confirms, his words nearly swallowed by his fatigue. They drag themselves through a couple of rooms to the couch, for both are too weary, and neither is entirely ready, to climb the stairs to the bedroom.
Instead, here on the couch, they lie crumpled against each other, and they are together one sweaty naked broken older mess that fades into two separate dreams.