Remus Recovers.

An admission takes place in the Hospital wing.

Disclaimer- I. Do. Not. Own... sadly. It cuts me up inside, but there we are...

This series is a homage to all of those fantastic 'pups get together' scenarios that are done regularly. I am trying my hand at them because I love them, but also because they are so fluffy and the other two fics I have trapped in my brain are decidedly not. They are all oneshots, but they are all cliches, and so I shall post them as a chaptered fic. Please enjoy and REVIEW. I need love, it's a difficult week ahead for me.

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Silent sunlight lit the morning. Ten long, thin fingers lay curled atop white linen sheets. The thin frame beneath still except for the slow rise and fall of sleep. Collar bones jutted from the base of a slender neck as his head lolled gently to the side as he shifted slightly in his sleep His golden hair formed a jagged halo on the pillow. Remus Lupin was sleeping off a harder than normal transformation in the quiet, bright and peaceful hospital wing of Hogwarts castle. Standing vigil over his recovery, looking thoroughly out of place, was Remus' best friend Sirius Black.

Sirius was everything that the room wasn't. At the best of times Sirius embodied chaos but as he stood beside the bed his mane of windswept ebony hair seemed to chew at the surrounding sunlight, his dusty and wrinkled robes clashed with the smooth clean lines of the linen, his handsome face was crumpled and strained next to Remus' peaceful sleep-mask, and as Remus' hands were still Sirius' were being twisted and knotted in one another as he fidgeted. Remus looked relatively well, bandages, cuts and bruises,but only an hour before he had been a bloody, broken and torn mess as he lay curled and whimpering upon the dusty floor of the shrieking shack.

Remus was hurt terribly because he'd had a bad transformation.

He'd had a bad transformation because Moony had been enraged.

Moony had been enraged because he has to be confined to the shack for the entire night.

He had to be confined because without all of them there he couldn't be contained, and they had been one short.

They had been one short because Sirius had gone and gotten himself a detention. On a Full Moon night. He had felt terrible about it. He hated letting Remus down. He hated letting Remus down because so many people had let him down in the past. He hated letting him down because Remus had always been so dependable and he deserved the same in kind. He hated letting Remus down because he loved him so dearly. For a long while he had known exactly how strong his feelings for his lycanthropic friend were and he had spent a while trying to push away the thoughts of his soft lips and gentle, easy laughter he had before he fell asleep at night, he had tried to push away the other, positively indecent, thoughts he had of Remus in the early morning. He had tried to ignore the dull swoop of his stomach when they brushed hands in the bustling hallways of Hogwarts and tried desperately to control the frantic hammer of his heart in the quiet moments they shared in the library working on some essay or another. Sirius had tried to rail against and deny his love for Remus and when that failed he had instead grabbed hold of it with both hands and surrounded himself with it. He now spent his days wrapped in the warm blanket of his love and he felt safe and secure in it. He had started thinking of it as a strength, not a weakness, he was so blessed to have had someone as utterly perfect as Remus to admire.

And this was how he behaved?

Instead of helping Remus through the difficult twelve hours before his monthly, nightmare transformation Sirius had been putting a modified bat-bogey hex on the Slytherin students breakfast. He had of course been caught and given a detention with Professor McGonagall. He had been so stupid to risk his friends like that. Remus had been positive that it wouldn't make a difference to be in the shack this one time, but the grim glare that James had sent to him behind Remus' back and the burning worry in his own gut had disagreed. And so he had dressed swiftly and set out across the grounds to be by Remus' side as soon as the Moon set.

He had stood over Remus in the dusty dark of the shack filled with a mute horror. His blood had gone cold in his veins as he felt the warmth leave his body. Remus was a fucking mess. Sirius felt ill. He forced himself to take in the worst of the damage. There was an ugly, deep gash below Remus' ribcage that was bleeding with impunity. The fingers of his left hand stuck out at sickening angles, broken and bruised the nails torn and bleeding. His breath rattled as though his throat burned with the taste of his own blood. A small piece of bone poked painfully and unnaturally through the skin on his left shin. All of this accompanied a myriad of cuts and bruises that littered almost every inch of Remus' body.

Moony had been so out of control that James and Peter had been unable to stay with him in the night. Sirius sank to his knees and cast a sleeping spell at his friend, lest he should wake up and feel the pain of his immense injuries. He began to quietly heal the smaller injuries until madam Pomfrey came and levitated Remus to the hospital wing. Sirius stayed behind and stared with blazing eyes at the pool of drying crimson at his feet. He was afraid. Remus really could have died. He would have died and the world would have lost one of very few bright points. Though Sirius was named after a star he knew that Remus' caring and kindness shone brighter than his namesake and warmed all those around him. Sirius was suddenly painfully aware that life was unpredictable and must never be taken for granted and he decided then and there that today he had to confess to Remus how he felt and hope that if his feelings weren't reciprocated they could remain friends. He had strode purposefully out of the shack straight backed and confident. He ranged across the grounds with the quiet grace of a man on a mission that cannot fail, through the halls his certainty that Remus felt the same for him grew with each step and with a steady hand he pushed open the door to the ward.

The warm air hit him in the face. The icy hand of fear grabbed at his intestines and he suddenly felt very, very stupid. So instead of waking Remus with a searing kiss he had taken his place beside Remus' bed and began agonising. This is exactly what he was doing when Remus awoke.

"Good morning, Padfoot. If you keep pulling faces the wind will change and it will stay that way." Remus joked quietly.

"er…ugh. Th- mmmm" Sirius cleared his throat and tried again to harness the power of speech "Yep. Er, I mean, no. I mean. Good morning, Moony."

Remus looked very worried and lurched forward to pull Sirius into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

"Are you okay, Pads? What have they done to you? Did Snape confound you? Did you hit your head?"

Remus had one hand wrapped tightly around Sirius' upper arm and the other on his forehead. Sirius, for his part, was staring strangely at Remus' thin chest that had been uncovered by the sudden forward movement. There was no blood anymore, merely scars and milky skin. Remus followed Sirius' eyes to his chest but both stayed frozen in an awkward tableau until Sirius raised a shaking finger to gently trace around a bandage that sat below Remus' ribs. Remus' breath hitched at the touch and the sound almost drowned out the incredibly quiet words Sirius spoke.

"Sorry, Moony. It's my fault." His voice wavered as tears pooled in his grey eyes. "I wasn't thinking, and I put you in danger. I'm so selfish and stupid and the only good thing I've ever done, the only smart thing in a history of foolishness, was cast aside for a prank and in those few seconds it took for me to get caught…"

"Padfoot? What do you mean?" Remus asked still clutching onto Sirius, his other hand had now dropped and was holding Sirius' free hand in his own. Sirius glanced down at Remus' hand in his and lifted it up to his lips. He kissed it with infinite tenderness.

"I love you, Moony. The only smart thing I've ever done was to love someone as perfect as you. I love you, and I nearly got you killed. You almost ripped yourself apart last night. I just-"

Sirius was silenced by Remus pressing hot, soft lips against his. Remus' hand gripped his arm harder as the werewolf growled and deepened the kiss. Sirius wasn't sure, but at some point in the last sentence he was convinced he had died and gone to heaven. He sighed happily. Remus chuckled before he looked into Sirius' eyes and ordered the boy to lay beside him.

"We are both too tired Sirius. We'll sleep now, here in each other's arms and we can talk later." He settled down with Sirius' head on his shoulder.

"There will be more snogging though?" Sirius asked sleepily.

"Of course," Remus chuckled as he kissed Sirius' nose, "now sleep."

Before Sirius fell asleep in Remus' arms for the first of a million times he made a quiet resolve to never let impulse lead him down the wrong path. A path that led away from Remus.