The first time, Sirius was terrified. No one had ever looked at him the way Remus was looking at him, like please and I want you and you're supposed to be the clever one. He smiled and held Remus so, so bone-breakingly close, and he hoped that it was enough.

Remus's spine and ribcage rose up from his back with each breath, revealing themselves beneath his skin then disappearing, like some mythical beast. Sirius was mesmerized, timing each thrust to match the gentle (now faster) rhythm of Remus Lupin's mysterious bones.

Afterwards, they lay on the floor, their hair and fingers intertwined, their young hearts swooshing in tandem. Neither of them wanted to move, so Sirius pulled the sheet off the bed above them, and they rolled themselves into it like a cocoon.

The first last time was claustrophobic and suffocating. The late summer heat-wave crushed Dorset in its fat, sweaty grip, squeezing away the last of their morale. Sirius had been gone for a long time. Remus had stopped counting the days, (small marks on a paper by the bed) when there were more marks under "apart" than "together". When Sirius came home, he was dusty and tired, his shoulder cut open and his ankle twisted. Remus hated how clean and useless he felt, a constant reminder that there was nothing to be done, that they were at a stalemate. And he hated Sirius for being alive.

They fucked loudly, Remus's back sliding with sweat against the slick finish of the kitchen table, Sirius's arm pinning him down at the chest keeping their bodies apart. Remus reached up and clawed at Sirius's hurt shoulder and he came while Sirius screamed.

When they finished, Sirius collapsed on top of him, and Remus couldn't breath, but he didn't move. The next minute Sirius left the room, and Remus lay on the table for an hour feeling dirty and utilitarian.

Remus walked into the flat and picked up a lamp. He thought about smashing it, but some detached part of him realized he was the only one left to clean up the mess. He placed it back on the table, carefully.

He stood there in the center of the flat until he could no longer stand, and then he sat on the floor. His hand brushed the coffee table, displacing a matchbook. He'd found it in Sirius's coat pocket the day before, the name of a muggle hotel emblazoned on its cover, but he hadn't said anything. He just didn't feel like fighting anymore. Now, he ran his fingers over the light-strip again and again, as though he might catch fire and burn away to nothing.

He spent days packing, boxing up clothing and records and throwing out everything that didn't belong to him. He kept some things, things they bought together, but these were reminders of what love was like and of the only time he was ever happy, not reminders of the man himself.

He slept on the couch for three weeks, until the lease ran out.

The first time after the first last time, Remus felt so calm he thought he might have been dead. She was pretty and soft. Gentle fingertips pushed the hair from his forehead as he retched afterwards. He told her it was the gin and the heat.

Despite it all, he found her name and telephone number scribbled on a napkin beside the bed. He slipped it into his pocket and carried it around with him for eight years.

The first time was also the only time.

The second first time, Sirius thought he was dying. His bed, his childhood bed, creaked and groaned with the sounds of ghosts being awakened, revived, exorcised.

Remus there, Remus in his arms, Remus in him, Remus in his brain, always and forever, Remus through the darkness – everything he'd been deprived of all these years and everything they goddamn deserved.

After, in the quiet, pre-dawn light, he didn't mean to cry, just like he didn't mean to whisper silly, child-like things – I love you like a fever and I missed you like the sky – into Remus's skin. Remus smiled and held him close, and in the morning they were both still there.

The last time, it was too fast, too quiet. There were people staying in almost every bedroom, and they'd barely had a chance to talk in weeks. Remus was away most every night, and this time Sirius got to sit at home and count the minutes.

When Remus walked in, Sirius had been asleep for hours, and at first he thought it was a dream. They came with their eyes locked on one another, beyond words and sounds, beyond expression.

The last time, it was too quiet, but everything that needed to be said was already in the air between them.

The first time after the end, Remus was still so sick with grief that he wasn't sure he could do it. But she was so kind, so understanding that he did anyway, and he didn't even regret it in the morning. It was the first time in months he had woken up without regret.

He talked too much about the past, about Sirius, and she listened. Eventually, when he'd told her everything, he stopped talking, and she still listened, waiting for words he could not say again, even now, even for her.

And then one day he said them, and it hurt like fire. The next time he said them, it hurt a little less. The last time he said them, he even meant them.