Confessional

It was late, and it was dark, and Sirius and Remus were lying on the cool grass under a sprinkled veil of stars. They were near the Forbidden Forest, and Remus could hear snuffling and footfalls and breaking branches. The kinds of noises he imagined he made under the light of the full moon. But he was quite unafraid. He wasn't scared of anything when he was with Sirius. Anything except losing Sirius.

It was a most befuddling thing. You could care so deeply about someone that whenever you were with them you felt like you were flying and diving and loop-the-looping and your heart was racing and you could barely even breathe at all. Like there was a bubble of fizzy happiness rising up inside you and it made you feel like you could do anything. But then there was the other side to it all. That omnipresent ache somewhere deep in your chest. The tight grip of terror that something would happen to the one you loved, or that somehow they would not feel the same way.

Remus couldn't understand it at all. He ran his hand lightly across the tickling blades of grass, trying to ground his thoughts. Trying to stop them bouncing off the stars and extending into infinity. This was something that was too huge, too all-consuming for him to comprehend. He couldn't break it down into all of its little components and gradually learn to see the whole picture, the way he did when he was figuring out a potion. It wasn't like a charm, something that you could keep practising until you knew the incantation backwards and could do the wand movement in your sleep. It was just there, colouring your world in pastels and making you hear music that wasn't there.

He gazed across at Sirius, who had his hands folded on his chest as he stared up at the clear indigo sky. The silence between them was gentle, safe. Remus felt he could lie there until the tentative pinkness began spreading over the horizon, not saying nor doing anything. Being with Sirius was like being with another part of himself. As if they were two halves to the same whole. Sirius gave him the confidence to say what he thought without agonising over each and every possible implication. Of course, he sometimes regretted it later, but the fact remained that Sirius was the only person in the world who made Remus feel like a normal, valuable person with views and opinions worth listening to. And now the light of the nearly full moon was giving him wolf-strength and the inky sky was smiling on him and Sirius's presence was intoxicating and Remus knew he could ask.

"Sirius… how do you define love?"

Without skipping a beat or even pausing to look at Remus, Sirius replied, "It's like hating someone, except without the anger."

Remus sighed and laid his head on the side to properly examine Sirius's profile. The damp earth was cool against his cheek. "Of all the nonsensical and downright ridiculous things you have ever said to me, this is the least helpful. And trust me, it has solid competition."

Sirius tore his stare from the constellations above and turned to face Remus. Their noses were within millimetres of each other. Time always seemed to run a little differently whenever they were that close. As if it were being stretched right out for some moments and then snapped back again for others. Remus would have dearly liked to be able to stop time entirely, so that the world could be condensed down to just the two of them. Just the warmth of their touches and the consecutive beating of their hearts. Like they were at the stillpoint, and everything else could just slip away.

"Think about it," Sirius said eventually. "When you hate someone, though you probably never have because you're golden Moony boy, they're always in your head, living in your thoughts. You are completely bent on that person. In an odd sort of way, they make you complete. Without them, there's an emptiness in you. But all of this is negative; destructive. If you take away the anger and leave only the passion, that's love. Or at least something like it."

Sirius logic, while in no way related to earth logic, did make some weird kind of sense. In a completely warped way. Remus tried to absorb this new information; tried to make it fit in his mind.

Why does this have to be so hard?

Remus worked with solid facts. He didn't follow vague theories. That was why he was so good at Arithmancy and so utterly terrible at Divination.

Why do feelings and emotions have to be so fluid, so hazy?

That was the eternal enigma. One code that no books would ever be able to help him decipher.

All the while, Sirius was watching him with a dark, unreadable look in his eyes. He seemed to be able to see something more than what was there, and to Remus that was more than a little unnerving. He tried to backtrack, stumbling as he attempted to justify himself and diffuse the intensity in Sirius's stare. He didn't want Sirius to get the wrong idea, after all. To think that he'd meant… something that he didn't mean. Remus mentally kicked himself. This was one of the times that Sirius reducing his inhibitions to nothing was not such a wonderful thing.

"It's just that James keeps saying that… well, you know… that he's in love with Lily, and I've never known how he could be so sure. How does he know that it's love that he's feeling? Couldn't it just be… lust, or… strong fondness?"

Sirius edged a little closer to Remus, so that their noses had closed that final abyss and were now touching. He nuzzled Remus a little, in a completely dog-like display of affection. He was so close that Remus could hear every whispered word as clearly as if Sirius had cast Sonorus on himself.

"No… James would die for Lily. As utterly disgusting as that is, I think… I'm fairly sure that it's love. But only James can say for sure. Only he feels it. When you're in love you just… know. It defies all explanation. It's as if it's… I don't know… in your soul, I suppose."

Silence descended in the wake of this comment, like gentle snow in winter or falling leaves in autumn. A cool breeze blew past, rustling the branches of the Forbidden Forest in a calm, pensive sort of way. While Sirius breathed faintly, Remus did what he did best. He thought.

"Sirius?" He was both happy and terrified to discover that his mouth was capable of forming words. "I… I think… I think I think…"

Running his fingers up and down Remus's forearm, Sirius cut in softly. "You think too much."

Remus inhaled deeply and forced himself to look directly into Sirius's eyes. The grey was clear and shining, quietly hopeful and innocently anticipatory.

"I love you, Sirius." He breathed.

Sirius didn't answer immediately, but rather shifted so that his head was resting on Remus's chest. His cheek was warm on Remus's ridgy collarbone, his breath lightly dancing on the soft skin of Remus's neck.

"I know you do." He whispered, shutting his eyes and settling himself down into the contours of Remus's body. He felt he could slot into it perfectly; like it was made just for him to slide in next to and hold in his arms forever. "You don't have to say."

Smiling, Remus leaned across and brushed his lips across Sirius's forehead. Sirius gave a contented purr and snuggled in closer, sprawling his leg across Remus's thighs. Remus suddenly felt pleasantly warm all over, and knew that he was blushing into the darkness. There was a moment of utter tranquillity, and then Sirius spoke again.

"Remus… I love you, too."