wildestranger | Fic: This Widening Bed Remus/Sirius PG-13

I had planned to write two fics for my birthday, neither of which has in fact materialised. But I have something else. It's kind of soppy. I don't know what came over me but here it is, and look, it's Remus/Sirius! *cuddles them both*

Title: This Widening Bed
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Words: 901
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns these characters, I have no permission to use them and I'm making no money out of this. No infringement of copyright is intended.

It's two in the morning when Sirius comes home. Remus listens for the sounds of the door closing, the heavy bag being dropped on the floor with exhausted carelessness. A curse without feeling (bugger), and then the bathroom door, and noises from the shower. Remus prepares himself to wait another ten minutes; after ten hours it shouldn't be too much. He knows that it isn't fastidiousness that keeps Sirius away a little longer, that whatever mission he had will have involved foul and noisome things, potions and blood and other bodily fluids. And Sirius, at least, is back.

Yet his head grows restless, the pillow already flattened from tonight's tossing and turning. The heavy limbs of almost sleep have given way to a body pulsing with adrenaline, fingers twitching with concealed anticipation under the covers. Remus takes deep breaths, looks at the alarm clock for the third time, and starts conjugating Latin in his head. Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. But it isn't enough to keep his body occupied when it knows Sirius is near and longing is making his toes curl.

"Moony? You awake?"

Sirius stands by the bedroom door, a dark silhouette against the white walls, the towel on his waist wet and clinging to his hips.

"Yes."

Remus breaths out the word, barely aloud, but Sirius will have heard it. Still, he doesn't move.

"How was it?"

This question he always dreads to ask, standing in for who died tonight and were you hurt and did you kill. Yet it must be said, for both their sakes, for whatever pretence of peace can be had during war.

"Okay."

At that Remus lifts the covers, exposing his pyjama-clad legs to the night air and letting the warmth escape. Sirius slips in quietly, his body still a little wet, shivering with cold or something else.

And Remus moves, covers the other's body with his own, his worn flannel doing battle against the chilled skin. There's a place just below Sirius' ear where Remus likes to press his nose and rub his face against Sirius' neck, chaste, close-mouthed kisses that that barely remind of passion. His hand is moving on Sirius' chest, stroking the heartbeat and making his fingertips tingle with friction. There's a tiny sob when he slides his leg up Sirius' calf and between his legs, and Sirius turns, entangling their feet so that somehow twisting they are wrapped up in each other.

It used to be always Sirius who would touch him, who'd reach out across the bed to pull him close or hold him by wrist or ankle or hip. Even now there is an absent-minded hand lying on Remus' side, a thumb stroking his hipbone while the other fingers keep him in place. And Remus has learned to feel these ephemeral caresses, to not hide inside himself, insensitive and paralysed. He can reach out and touch Sirius, and he can mean it. This flesh, which he has learned by heart to pleasure and play with, is also a thing he can embrace.

This constant want still scares him sometimes, this holding of his heart outside his own body. But there is no fear when he lifts his hand to Sirius' hair, still wet from the shower and dripping onto their pillow, and wrapping his fingers into it, pulling Sirius closer. This he can do, this he can show, the wants of his body nothing more than to be close at this moment. There's a rumble in Sirius' chest, a laughter Remus feels before he hears it, a smile as he shifts his limbs to fit better. Sirius has many smiles just for him, a wicked one for licking Remus' belly and spreading his legs, a grateful one for listening to Remus' secrets, but this one is the most precious, reserved only for the intimacy of late nights. It has quiet joy in it, and knowledge, of who they are and what they do. Remus is aware that the corresponding one on his face shows too much, or maybe just enough.

They are getting tired now, the pulsing blood turning into sleepy nuzzling and half-mumbled words. There is warmth again under the covers, and they are protected from the cold air and the holes in the windows by the heavy duvet and each other's bodies.

There is no sleep without Sirius now, Remus acknowledges, and some part of him is fiercely glad of it. That he isn't dead after all, that the bitterness he has cultivated these many years (twenty-one, he ruefully reminds himself) has not destroyed his ability to feel. That he can inhabit his body and not be afraid of what it might do, not be ashamed of what it wants.

Turning, Remus shifts his body so that he is half shielding and half hiding in Sirius. There is no embarrassment in any noise or movement he might make, and will make the next time Sirius pins him to the bed and makes him cry out. He can say words, even the dreaded three that never quite manage not to sound corny, but he says them nevertheless, often, to remind them both that it is not only Sirius who is brave.

But for now it's enough to stroke Sirius' cheek and pull him closer, to kiss his ear and feel the touch of dry lips on his nose, and whisper I missed you.