Author's Note:Well, getting this last chapter out only took me forever. Anyway, huge thanks to the reviewers. I'd love to think each one of you individually with chocholate and Moony/Padfoot kisses, but fanfiction-net says NO, and I've already gotten in enough trouble because of that 'no smut' rule. Still, know that so much love goes out to each and every one of you because as much as you liked reading this story, I liked the feedback even more. It makes me giggle like a tweleve year old at christmas. It really does. You can just ask my roommates, who are kinda-sorta frightened by it. Enough with the babbling.

Mr. Moony and Mr. Padfoot Discuss Nothing of Any Real Importance

There is a point where Lily, James, and Peter agree that they can only do so much. They lay it all out for Sirius and Remus. All the two boys have to do is act with absolutely no thinking on their own parts required. Lily, James, and Peter do all this for them, and then they sit back and wait for something to happen.

Peter expects there to be a fight. James expects fireworks or huge, divine signs from above. Lily isn't sure what she expects, but knowing Remus and Sirius she doesn't expect it to work out smoothly. None of them expect everything to fall into a stalemate like pattern, but it does. And this is how it goes:

When Sirius asks Remus to see his Charm notes, Remus ignores him.

When Sirius suggests they work on finishing the map, Remus ignores him.

When Sirius steals the last bite of pudding off of Remus's plate, Remus ignores him.

When Sirius gets tired of being ignored he puts his arm around Remus's shoulder. He leans close to him when they walk together. He touches him more than strictly necessary, and for no reason at all. He does all of this until Remus can't take it any more and storms off to lock himself in the dorm room or bury himself under a pile of homework, which works like a Sirius bane.

When Remus goes to apologize for acting so strange he finds Sirius pressed against a girl with his hands everywhere.

When Remus slams the door to the dorm room hard enough to shake the frame, James and Peter know to get out of his way as quickly as possible if they want to keep all their limbs in place.

When Sirius gets bored of the random girl he's chosen to distract him, something that usually takes less than an hour, he goes to find Remus, who has started ignoring him again.

Remus says he's not ignoring Sirius, which isn't true.

Sirius says he's not overreacting, which isn't true, either.

Peter says that Remus is angry with Sirius, which also isn't true.

James says Sirius is still in denial, which is almost true, but not quite.

Lily says both of the boys are idiots. She tends to be right about these sorts of things.

"Do you think," Lily asks when Sirius has found yet another girl desperate enough to take him and Remus is off wondering the halls of Hogwarts trying not to think about Sirius and failing miserably, "we can lock them in a closet? I think it might help, locking them in a closet."

James shakes his head and runs a hand through his girlfriend's hair, which is almost as comforting as messing with his own. "I think being in a closet is the last thing they need," he says. "If anything, we need to lock them out of the closet."

Lily opens her mouth to point out that at least they'd be in the same closet instead of two entirely different closest located on the opposites ends of Hogwarts, but then Remus is storming into the commons and Lily has the good sense to keep quiet. He passes by the couple and heads up the stairs so that he can take his anger out on his pillow, which by now is flat and nearly featherless. Seconds later, Peter scurries down the stairs.

"We need to lock them in a room together." Peter is shaking and his hands refuse to stay still even when he sits on them. "See which one comes out alive."

Lily gives James a pointed look.

Sirius comes into the commons, wiping his mouth against his sleeve. "Felina Inge tastes like rotten peaches," he announces to no one in particular. Three pairs of eyes follow him as he marches to the dorm, spitting all the way there.

"When Sirius dies I get his broom," James says once his friend is out of sight.

"Can I have his quidditch posters?" Peter asks.

There is a loud sigh of someone who has been frustrated to the point of yanking out her own hair by the handfuls. "They're doomed. Boys are bollocks at talking." James and Peter are too shocked by Lily's language to lay claim to any more of Sirius's things.

"And," Lily adds. "I get his chess set."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The first thing Sirius does is pull off his robe.

The sleeve is wet from where he's been trying to get Felina's spit out of his mouth and the whole thing smells like some sort of rotten berry orgy. "What is with girls and perfume?"

"I wouldn't know," Remus answers, and just then Sirius notices that he's not alone.

It's not that he feels uncomfortable standing there in just his Y-fronts, but Sirius makes a quick dash for his trunk. "Hey, Moony. Thought you'd be in the library." Sirius grabs the first thing he can and pulls it over his head without thinking. It ends up being some sweater Mrs. Potter had bought him last Christmas that hangs just above his knees.

He plops down on the edge of his bed, right across from Remus. Remus finds some spot on the carpet to study. This is his way of telling Sirius that he has gone back to ignoring him.

Sirius isn't very good with repetitious actives or nonverbal communication. He's bored of the pattern, even if he is half of the problem, and he doesn't feel up to sneaking around Remus's defenses to get answers. He asks, "Remus, are you ignoring me?"

"Yes," Remus answers. He realizes this is the wrong thing to say and quickly adds, "No." Then he figures that if he wants to ignore Sirius properly he shouldn't answer at all and promptly falls silent.

"Well, that's good," Sirius says. "So this not talking to me thing isn't me in trouble, then."

"No," Remus says. "You're not in trouble."

Remus thinks that if anyone is in trouble it would be Lily. He has had three weeks to think it over, and Remus has come to the conclusion that Lily is delusional. He's rather upset by this revelation since he has become rather fond of the only girl able to keep James's attention on anything other than quidditch for more than a few hours at a time. He hopes they have a ward at Saint Mungo's specifically for people crazy enough to think that Sirius might be gay, because in his three weeks of deep contemplation Remus has also decided that this is quite impossible and anyone who thinks otherwise must be insane.

Sirius taps his foot against the bed. He closes his eyes. He wonders if the taste of Felina is ever going to go away. He thinks about James and about a charm that would make his breath stink of rotting fish so that Lily would vomit every time he kisses her.

Remus says, "Sirius, I've been thinking."

Remus had been thinking, but not the sort of thoughts he wanted to share with Sirius. Thoughts he could blame almost entirely on Lily such as Sirius being into guys (he wasn't) and what type of guys he would be into (guys that didn't have light mud colored hair and weren't far too skinny and never smelled like wolf).

Then there were those thoughts that involved Sirius, Remus, a bed, and occasionally something like rope, but Remus had been having those thoughts long before Lily decided she was the expert on his love life.

"About what?" Sirius thinks about that old aphorism dealing with cats, death, and curiosity. He wonders if the same is true of canines.

"I've been thinking," Remus draws out the words as long as he possibly can. He prays that he can think up something to say, or maybe that Mcgonagall will burst into the room and announce that the entire school has to be placed under a silencing spell for the next fifty years.

He pauses. His head is still empty and Mcgonagall hasn't appeared. Sirius is watching Remus, waiting for him to say something. Remus bites down on his nails like he wants to draw blood. He says, "I'm gay."

This works just as well as a silencing charm.

"Right," Remus says. "I just thought you should know, being my friend and all." He bites down on his nails to keep his mouth from running without input of his brain. He briefly thinks about throwing himself out of the window, but figures that this might hurt. Not to mention draw a lot of attention to him. Remus has never been fond of pain or attention.

The only thing Sirius can say is, "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," Remus says. "I mean, you remember Connor? I dated him."

Sirius wishes he'd managed to get that bludger closer to Connor's face last year. He makes a mental note to practice on his aim for the upcoming game against Ravenclaw.

"And Jones," Remus adds. "You know, that boy two years above us. I sort of, don't know what you would call it. Dated I guess. Yeah, I dated him, too."

Sirius thinks about this for a moment before saying, "But he's married to that Endora girl." Before Remus can say anything Sirius adds, "Of course she is flat enough to be a boy."

"There you have it." Remus gets off his bed and the nausea hits him. He tries to convince himself that it could have been worse. There were worse things to admit to your friends, and Remus had already had to tell them about his lupine condition. Nothing else could have shocked them. Not unless he'd admitted that he was related to Snape and they were having some sort of incestuous love affair.

These uncontrollable thoughts do nothing to quell the sickness in his stomach.

"I should go now," Remus says. He is swaying on his feet and for some reason can't locate the part of his brain that allows him to move forward. "I... Um... Need to study for those NEWTs. Only a year and a half away, you know."

Remus chances a look at Sirius. Sirius is leaning back against the wall, staring at the canopy of his bed and looking as cool and disinterested as any boy whose friend didn't just announce he was a poof.

Remus's stomach doesn't feel calm about the way Sirius's looks, or the way Remus can't stop looking at him. It gives a turn to remind Remus that he should be running, not standing there with his mouth a gape and letting his mind conjure up images of beds and tangled sheets and his wrists attached to the headboard with the gryffindor tie. "Right. I'm going."

Sirius sits up. He asks, "Remus?" Remus stops, not even halfway to the door. "How would someone know they were, say, a poof?"

"I don't know," he admits.

Sirius rolls his eyes. "Of course you do," He says. "I mean, how did you know?"

The tumbling in Remus's stomach calms a little. He takes a seat on the edge of Sirius's bed. "I knew," he says. "I knew because giving up a date so that I could hang out with you guys was never an issue."

"Because when I was with boys I talked about us, and with I was with girls I talked about boys."

"Because I would have rather been sitting a little too close to a boy then have a naked girl on my lap."

"Because I had to stop myself from blushing every time any guy looked at me for longer than a minute or two."

"Because I can't stand seeing certain guys hanging around with girls, and it has nothing to do with the girls."

"Because it's easy to picture myself in bed with another guy."

"Because I spent more time looking through the quidditch section of the paper than James's 'collection'."

"Because the first time I kissed a boy, it tasted good."

Sirius asks "It tasted good?" and makes Remus turn about five hundred shades of red.

"It's stupid," Remus says. He studies his nails before he bites at them so that he doesn't have to look at Sirius.

Sirius isn't looking at Remus either. He's licking the insides of his cheeks, finding the last few drops of cold and rotten tasting spit still clinging to his mouth. "Remus?"

"Yeah?"

Sirius says, "I need your help with something."

Remus shrugs and says, "Sure," because he knows that he'll help Sirius with anything he needs. He's not sure if this is a good thing or not, but he doesn't really have a choice in the matter.

Then they kiss.

Sirius kisses Remus, because he can't take the way his tongue feels heavy and his breath is stale as a reminder of kissing Felina. It's Remus's fault that he had to kiss her in the first place, because if Sirius hadn't been forced to touched Remus so that he'd stop ignoring Sirius then his skin wouldn't have set on fire and his mind wouldn't have gone all haywire.

Sirius kisses Remus, sweeping his tongue into Remus's mouth and gathering his taste. Remus helps him, just like he always does. He's warm and alive and kisses Sirius right back until Sirius loses all of his own taste and Remus is in his mouth, licking away at the last hints of moldy fruit.

When Sirius is satisfied with the flavor he pulls away. Somehow, Remus has gotten his hands knotted in Sirius's hair.

Sirius sweeps his tongue through his mouth. Felina's taste seemed to last forever, but Remus's was already disappearing from his mouth. Sirius didn't like that. "You're going to have to kiss me again," he says.

Remus does, and the conversation is over.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

James comes back to the Common Room with his glasses off. He cleans them on his robe, concentrating so hard on the task he nearly trips down the stairs at three different points.

When he gets back to the couch Peter asks, "Is Sirius dead?"

Lily asks, "Is Remus yelling at him yet?"

James doesn't answer. He still hasn't put his glasses back on. "Lily, do you think you could get us some extra blankets?"

Lily has never seen James such an interesting shade of red before, and can't remember the last time he'd made such a big deal of avoiding eye contact. "Sure," she says. "Are you okay?"

James shakes his head no and says, "Yeah, fine." He puts his glasses on, takes them back off, and falls back into a chair. "I think," he says, wiping his glasses off on Peter's robe. "I think we're going to be sleeping in the commons tonight."