The India Ink Problem

(Or, a rather unfitting title to a Sirius' addiction to chewing quills)

I love this boy, Sirius thinks, jarring his brain as he jars his teeth on the nibbed end of a quill. The taste of India ink is metallic as blood, but bitter, and he pulls a face but doesn't make any move to rectify the situation. It was just as well. He needs the distraction; is desperate for it in all ways tangible and intangible.

Perhaps love is too strong; they are, after all, friends. Brothers. You can love a brother; Sirius loves Regulus, however much of a prat he tends to be. But Remus. Remus thinks he's a prat, and Sirius encourages the thought—but he isn't. Not by a long shot is Remus John Lupin even remotely associated with the word 'prat'.

He's an angel, really.

Sirius gags at the sentiment—or perhaps the ink—and continues on his transfiguration essay, a day too late. McGonagall relented only because she saw Sirius had spent the entire day in the hospital wing asleep by Remus' side.

"Don't get used to favors, Black," she told him. "This is your one freebie. Use it wisely."

She knows he will; he always does. She also seems to know what Sirius refuses to think about. The sentiment. The feeling of brotherly love that is not so much brotherly as simply sexual, and there is no lust involved. Lust is what James did when he was in second year and suddenly discovered that Lily Evans was, in fact, a girl.

Perhaps Sirius had lusted after Remus, too. Merlin knows he wanted him for as long as he could remember—he didn't want to remember anything else.

But Sirius is digressing and his essay has suddenly diverted from Animagi to being confused, with various interjections of Remus' name, and he is forced to find a new parchment. He thinks nothing of simply crumpling up the parchment and tossing it aside. It rolls in front of the door.

Sirius watches it for a moment, staring at the reflections of moonlight on the aged paper, and the black scratching of his rather formal handwriting. From here he can't make out a single word, but he isn't trying to.

And moments later he finds himself too tired to continue, and falls asleep with the quill resting against the corner of his mouth.

-----

Remus has spent the entire evening with James and Peter, and is now thoroughly drained. Sirius claimed he had an essay to finish, but Remus told him that he must have been daydreaming, as that particular assignment was due the day before. (Although Remus had had it finished in advance.)

In any case, James and Peter were now fast asleep in the common room with numerous wrappers of nicked Honeyduke's chocolate scattered around them, and Remus feels no remorse in leaving. So he does.

The dorm is dark, and Frank is presumably out with Alice. There is no sign of Sirius, and for a moment Remus wonders if he hadn't been lying about the essay. There is a twinge of something unpleasant in his chest as he imagines his friend out on a spur-of-the-moment date with some random student (girl or boy, Sirius has never cared), and Remus sighs, shutting the door quietly, as if he suspected that someone was sleeping.

A crunch beneath his foot directs his attention to a piece of crumpled parchment. Ordinarily, Remus would have tossed it out or transfigured it into something far more useful, but when he looks up, he sees the moonlight casting a shadow over raven hair, and a sleeping face, marred by the black ink of the quill he must have been chewing on.

Remus stifles a laugh beneath his hand and makes to wake Sirius up, but the sight is beautiful, and he wishes to take it in. For a moment, anyway. Just a moment. He never got enough moments.

Moonlight is heavy, and unlike the sun it doesn't dance when casting light upon the world. It marches solemnly forward, mourning whatever there is to mourn, and shedding dismal beauty in its wake. Sirius is a tragedy, Remus thinks. Sirius is a tragedy and the silver of the moon suddenly enhances it.

Remus wants so badly to touch the sleeping figure, and to move the quill, but he doesn't. Sirius won't let his true nature be illuminated willingly, and Remus won't let this opportunity escape. So he waits, and fiddles nervously with the parchment as he hovers near the desk.

He feels ridiculous. The second that James and Peter wake up, they will be louder than a herd of elephants (not that Remus knows how loud elephants are, but he has ideas), and take the mickey out of Sirius for the ink covering his bottom lip. Remus thinks it's endearing, really, and finds himself drawn to those lips with intense curiosity and even more intense longing. There is nothing he wants more than to kiss and lick that ink away, but the thought scares him, and he nervously crumples the parchment just a bit more.

The parchment. Remus realizes that he has nothing better to do, and he certainly doesn't trust his mind at the moment, so he unfolds the brown paper as carefully as possible, and Sirius doesn't even stir.

It's the essay, all right. Remus has already discovered the truth in the statement, but for some reason he feels oddly reassured now that he has even more proof. It's well-written proof, too, but it barely reaches half the page before the sentences become more erratic. Remus focuses his attention on the area near the end, where ink is splattered and the rows of words are crooked on the page.

"In comparison to," the last sentence begins. But suddenly it seems to turn into an excerpt from a diary, and Remus blushes as his name appears and reappears amidst babbling about confusion and love.

Love.

Remus hurriedly crumples up the parchment with shaking fingers and tosses it back to the door.

"That bad?"

Remus starts so badly he yelps, and Sirius looks stricken. "Sorry," he murmurs nervously, as if suddenly recalling why he'd crumpled up his first draft in the first place.

For the life of him, Remus can't come up with enough English words to reply, so he makes a nondescript noise and offers a feeble smile in replacement for a simple 'it's okay.'

Sirius moves and the moonlight illuminates the stain on his lip, and suddenly Remus' ability to speak comes back to him before he can control it. "You've got ink on your mouth," he says hurriedly. "Just there." Remus wipes at the corner of his own mouth to show Sirius, but Sirius merely blinks.

"Er, what?"

"Ink," Remus blurts out again, louder this time. "At the corner of your mouth. From your quill."

Sirius wipes at the wrong side of his mouth, and Remus frowns. "No, no, other side. My right." Again, Sirius misses the target and Remus shakes his head.

"Here," he says suddenly, standing up before he can stop himself. Tentatively licking his thumb, he cups the side of Sirius' face and rubs gently at the skin. The ink only smudges more. Remus laughs and Sirius mimics the action, only his laugh is deeper, and without the nervous edge that Remus' had.

"What're you?" Sirius begins. "My mother?"

"I should hope not," Remus says with mock indignation. "Hold still." But Sirius grabs his hand before he can do anything more about the offending stain and Remus suddenly forgets how to breathe.

Sirius doesn't speak, but his gaze speaks for him—it yells, burns, bores into Remus like the full moon, and he goes weak. Sirius' grip tightens, and his free hand snakes around Remus' waist as he whispers, "Careful," though it's obvious he'd more than wanted this to happen.

Remus knows he'd more than wanted this to happen, too. "What are you doing?" he whispers to keep some sort of his Remus Tact about him. Sirius can see through the façade—Sirius could always read him better than anyone else—and he leans forward so that his breath, warm and soft and oh, so wonderful, washes over Remus' face.

"I don't know," he says with a small grin. The grin fades when Remus' self-control fades, and he wraps his arms around Sirius with a possessiveness that only the wolf could match, and Sirius, not one to be beaten at his own game, captures his lips.

And then, oh, oh and then it's like electricity; the only sort of electricity that Hogwarts can supply. It tingles down Remus' spine and turns his stomach in the most pleasant ways, settling itself lower than he thought was safe. Sirius doesn't seem to notice; he's too intent on tugging Remus' bottom lip with his teeth, and too intent on mapping out Remus like he had Hogwarts.

It is by no means a careful kiss—there is teeth and tongue and noses bumping as Remus tries to familiarize himself with Sirius. He presses himself against the taller boy's warmth and his fingers curl themselves around the thin fabric of his shirt. Sirius' hands drop to the small of his back and he presses Remus against him, and in turn presses himself against the desk, knocking ink wells, quills, and parchment to the floor.

Their rhythm is sloppy, desperate, and filled with such longing that Remus had never known existed between them. When had they wanted this? When had Sirius needed him as much as he needed Sirius? But when Sirius' hips moved against his own just like that it hardly seemed to matter.

Remus growls, licking the other boy's bottom lip as they took a break for air. There was no time to stare now; now it is only about more. More. More. Remus presses Sirius farther against the desk, and now Sirius has no choice but to sit upon it, pulling Remus up to straddle his lap. The position is most uncomfortable, but pleasure overrides the pain, and Remus, bent over Sirius now, dips his head to lick a vulnerable pulse point, feeling the fluttering rhythm just beneath the tender skin.

He can't trust himself enough not to claim Sirius completely, so he lifts his head and moves in again. Finally they have something that is more than a clash of need and want and desire and oh, oh Remus just wants to somehow pull Sirius against him and into him and feel like this forever. He's growing hard and he can tell Sirius is, too, and he grinds his hips and feels Sirius shudder and moan, and it cuts through him like a hot knife.

"Bloody hell!" cuts through him, as well, but it leaves a scar.

-----

Remus tastes like so many things that he'd always considered to be Remus. Dusty parchment, ink, tea, and most especially chocolate. Sirius knows he got his habit of chewing quills from Remus, and he knows he got his addiction to chocolate from Remus, but he won't need either of these things now that he has what he wants. Remus is all around him, and his absorption in simply moving against him into oblivion and beyond is his new addiction. Tasting Remus. Feeling him. Listening to him plead and whimper and keen and growl.

"Bloody hell!" was not what he had expected.

James.

Bloody hell!

Remus scrambles off of Sirius so quickly that it leaves him empty and cold, and he shudders violently.

"Prongs!" he exclaims as he jumps off the desk and angles himself so that James can't see every element of exchange between himself and Remus. "Mate! Just. Finishing the essay." Sirius casts a wary glance at Remus and sees that he looks utterly ashamed. Utterly ashamed but with mussed hair and swollen lips that even the moonlight can't hide. He looks so fucking debauched that Sirius just wants to continue it, nevermind the spectator.

When he looks back at James, James only looks at him in horror.

"Christ, Sirius!" he cries. "At least lock the sodding door next time!"

When James leaves, he does it for them.