3. Ends

'It is a truth universally acknowledged', the note began, and Remus winced at his desk, almost certain he knew where this was going. Sirius' messy, maddening script continued; 'That Remus Lupin is in possession of a perfect arse.' He put the paper down.

Aside from his casual butchering of Jane Austen (something which happened on a surprisingly regular basis; Remus suspected that Sirius enjoyed Pride and Prejudice significantly more than he let on) the note was slightly out of sorts with Sirius' usual fare.

He turned around to look at Sirius across the room, the note face-down on the table with his hand covering it for good measure. Sirius was making an ostentatious display of 'concentrating' – he was bent over his paper, a quill clutched in one fist, eyes inches from the workbench as he raised and lowered his eyebrows as if what sat in front of him was the single most interesting thing he'd ever read. His acting was far from perfect in the first place, of course, but mostly he was betrayed by the fact that before the note had whizzed across the classroom and hit him in the ear, even Remus had been falling asleep to the lullaby of Professor Binns' droning voice.

Perplexed, Remus looked up to check the professor wasn't watching (he wasn't), transfigured a corner of his paper into a small (and, he thought proudly, terrifically on-model) white Boeing 747 and shot it at Sirius' head. It hit him square between his eyes and yet, if possible, he only stared more intensely at his paper; but even with his head down Remus could see him grin.

He resisted the temptation to scribble 'Twat' on yet another piece of paper and turned back instead, with the creeping sensation that as soon as he did Sirius would write him another strangely lewd literary reference, but for the rest of the lesson all he heard was the slow, steady monotone of Binns, a noise which drowned out all his rational thought and replaced it with potential ways in which he could throw himself out the third-storey window without causing too much of a fuss.

XxX

Over the course of the next week, notes came thick, fast, and without context; in Potions the following day, partnered with Sirius, he asked him to pass the mortar and pestle and was halfway through grinding snake fangs when he discovered the small white (now covered in ground fangs) note in the bowl of the mortar, which read 'Lupin's arse is nothing like the sun'. He lifted his head from the mortar, the note pinched between two fingers, ready to at least ask what on earth that was even supposed to mean, aside from replacing 'eyes' with 'arse', but Sirius was suddenly and inexplicably on the other side of the dungeon and when he returned, arms full of porcupine quills, he distracted Remus very effectively by charming the efforts of a hufflepuff girl across from them to fly out of her cauldron and swoop around the room in the shape of a dragon, blowing raspberries (he really hadn't meant to drop it on her but there was no defending it once the deed was done, and really, it proved that the girl's sleeping potion had been very effective, judging by the way she fainted).

After that they increased in their enthusiasm; he found them on the underside of the sugar bowl's lid at breakfast; suits of armor flicked them at him as he passed; one morning he woke and, unnervingly, beside him on the pillow was 'I met a traveller from an antique land, who said: "cor blimey have you seen that Remus Lupin's arse it is bloody lovely"'. He found them in his pockets at the end of the day, each more ridiculous than the last, and Sirius was, by the end of the week, definitely avoiding talking about it.

It was convenient for him that Remus didn't want to bring it up in front of James and Peter, because it seemed all of a sudden that they were never alone together. Whenever he walked into a room to find Sirius on his own he would quickly make an excuse ("Whoops, Moons, have to piss, bye!" was not a legitimate excuse when you used it seventeen times a day, unless Sirius had a problem much more urgent than the note-writing) and rush out of the room, grinning infuriatingly to himself. It was maddening; nearly seven years, now, they'd known eachother and still Remus was completely at a loss as to what the hell was supposed to be happening. He wished he could ask James, if only for a bit of perspective, but that was one awkward conversation he really didn't think it was necessary for them to have.

So it continued; 'the apparition of those faces in the crowd; not as nice as Remus Lupin's arse', stuck to his shirtsleeve, 'Let us go then and look at Remus' arse', on the bottom of his shoe, 'This above all; to Remus Lupin's arse be true' , flapping against water, clipped to the shower-head. Sometimes they made him laugh; sometimes they made him wonder where on earth Sirius had gotten hold of the poem, but they always, always, made his stomach twist anxiously, and there seemed to be more and more of them each day. James found 'Yet portion of that unknown plane will Remus' arse for ever be' and frowned at it as if the words didn't quite make sense (which wasn't very surprising, Remus reminded himself, as it was gibberish, just like all the others) "What's this?" he asked dubiously, pinching the note between thumb and forefinger. Remus grabbed it off him quickly.

"Nothing. It's nothing."

James never pushed him, but he did take the liberty of looking incredibly confused. "…Alright." He said slowly, and left for quidditch practice, looking at Remus over his shoulder as he left. Remus, mortified, folded the note up and put it in the sock where he'd been keeping the others. He didn't know how many there were, exactly, but the sock was nearly full, and he was running out of excuses to comb the dorm from top to bottom looking for them so no one would find them first.

xxx

The final straw of his semi-passive-aggressive 'I'm just not going to mention this until it blows over' policy came when Remus reached behind his own ear almost two weeks after the first note and found a tiny piece of paper whose words, when you squinted, just said 'Roses are Red, Violets are blue. Also, Remus has a nice bum'. He stared at it. Sirius wandered out of the bathroom and Remus, sitting on the floor with the note clutched in his hand, turned to look at him.

"Is that it?"

Sirius, drying his hair, lifted his head underneath the towel. "Is what it?"

"This." Remus waved the note. "Roses are red, violets are blue? Pads. That's pathetic."

Sirius started snickering uncontrollably. "Sorry." He said, amid laughter, and wandered over to his bed, the towel around his shoulders. Remus watched him go.

"Are we going to talk about it, then?"

Sirius whistled nonchalantly as he dug through his bedside cabinet. "Talk about what?" He was standing half-turned towards Remus, brushing his hair, and Remus could once again see the shit-eating grin plastered across his face. Remus waved the piece of paper sarcastically, and Sirius finally turned to look at him as he carefully picked the parting out of his hair with the comb. "Oh, those. Should've been more specific."

"Dick." Remus muttered, but the note was still clutched in his hand, unexplained. Sirius had the comb stuck in his hair and was attempting to tease knots out of it, wincing. He stretched, giving the comb one last tug through.

"Right. Well. I'm off. Practice. Prongs'll be waiting." He slid the towel from around his shoulders and dropped it on the bed, still grinning whenever he wasn't talking. Quidditch kit in one hand he left the dormitory before Remus could stop him, whistling cheerily. Remus watched him go, the 'poem' still in his hand, not sure if he was getting the joke at all.

Xxx

"Did you like them?"

Two days and no new notes later, Remus was hunched over a desk in the common room trying to catch up with herbology after missing deadlines during the full moon, and not having much luck. Sirius, in off the pitch for the third time that week, leaned on the desk beside him. He stank of outside.

Remus looked at him, mouth twisted because he was trying not to laugh. "Did I what?"

"Did you like them?" Sirius repeated, as if the question was perfectly reasonable. Remus raised his eyebrows.

"I don't know. Was I supposed to like them?"

Sirius shrugged noncommittally. The corners of his mouth trembled with repressed laughter and Remus opened his mouth, realizing finally what the hell was going on, and felt suddenly incredibly smug.

"Sirius Black, are you courting me?" he said, an edge to his voice that bordered on hysteria, both for the situation itself and the chance that he'd completely misread what was happening. Sirius flapped his mouth uselessly for a moment, taken by surprise.

"No!"

"You are! Merlin's balls." He exclaimed, enjoying this far more than he perhaps should have. "You wrote poems about my arse."

"Other people's poems!" Sirius said defensively, looking scandalised.

"Sirius Black wrote poems about my arse. And sent them to me." Remus grinned deliriously. "You read Eliot while thinking about my arse."

"Shut up." Sirius mumbled.

"You read Ezra Pound. And thought about my arse."

"Yeah, alright Moons. Shut your face." Sirius waved a hand, looking around the common room for listeners, face red. "Didyoulikethemthough?" He asked again in one breath, slightly more shamefaced, and Remus was tearing up, shaking with mirth, close to pressing his forehead on the desk just to be in contact with something solid.

"Merlin's balls." He said again, gasping for breath. "I – I can't believe you. This is – this is actually not that surprising." He sighed, still giggling and trying desperately to stop. "Oh, Pads, you twat. Yes, I liked them, I suppose. I kept them, in any case, but – what did you think was going to happen? What on earth were you trying to achieve?"

"I dunno." Sirius muttered, smiling faintly through his embarrassment. "Got your attention, didn't I?"

"You have everyone's attention every moment of every single day, Pads." Remus sighed, in a long-suffering sort of way. "Mine included."

"Oh well, in that case I wish I hadn't bothered."

"Prat."

"Arse."

"Topical."

"Is it?" Sirius asked faux-innocently, tilting his head to one side, and Remus experienced the familiar sensation of finding him simultaneously completely unbearable and ridiculously endearing. The common room was empty – it mostly had been from the start – and Sirius smelt like the pitch, like rain, like sweat. Like running under the moon, which they hadn't actually done all that long ago, but mostly he smelt like Sirius, and that was the crux of the whole thing, wasn't it?

He stood up, smiled ironically, bent down, took Sirius' face in his hands, and kissed him. "You are not a poet." He said, close, hands travelling to his jaw.

"Definitely not." Sirius said, a little breathlessly, agreeing. "You do have a nice arse though." He slid his hands over it to make the point, and Remus chuckled.

"So I've been told."