Chapter Text
Two years is a lot when you’re a kid. Remus had reminded himself of this so frequently it often looped on repeat in his mind. As he got older it would become a reason he gave himself for why it all felt so dangerous. You don’t want to be seen riding bikes with your 5 year old neighbour who still has his training wheels on. Two years is a lot when you’re at the bus stop for the junior high school and he’s still at the elementary one, trading braided friendship bracelets with the girls in his class.
It’s a lot when you’re learning to drive and he’s still beating around on his bike, even if he’s practicing tricks in his driveway with angry music blaring, a bloody knee. No training wheels now.
It’s still a lot when you cross the front lawn of your house after walking your girlfriend home, and he’s there sitting in the shadow that stretches between his house and yours. Knees drawn into his chest, pushing the gravel around with the toe of his ratty sneaker. 10:45pm, just like you’d agreed on.
Two years was a lot, but not enough for Remus to put a stop to what they were doing. It wasn’t enough to keep him from riding bikes with the neighbour kid when no one else was around, or giving a quick smile when their eyes met waiting for the bus, or lending the kid his favourite CDs and helping him restack the old boards in the street when he failed to clear them and went down in a tangle of metal and limbs. It wasn’t enough to stop him from sitting at his computer nearly every night when he got in from dates or parties or basketball games and send him a message, trying not to let himself hope he’d be there waiting, trying not to let himself feel the rush of excitement when he was.
They were both teenagers by then, right? Two years is not as much when you’re 15 and 17, Remus would hear himself think. Besides, they were just talking. It wasn’t anything weird.
By the summer after eleventh grade, it was just hanging out in the woods behind their street. Remus answered his questions about basketball and driving, smirking while the boy balanced his bike precariously on a fallen, rotting tree. Just sometimes, early in the mornings before Remus’ friends were up and banging at his door.
At some point it became nearly every day. They’d meet there at 8pm, after their mindless summer jobs and when Remus knew his friends would be at football practice. His parents never wanted him to play and shortly after falling into this unspoken routine, he’d stopped badgering them about it. Still, it wasn’t anything weird, even if there was usually no bike now and their knuckles sometimes knocked together as they walked. Even if his heart sunk on the days Sirius messaged him that he couldn’t make it that night.
Though, Remus could admit, it did get a little weird. At least it felt weird at night when he stared at his bedroom ceiling and thought about the things he’d done.
But as it was happening, it did not feel weird to start hooking his pinky finger into Sirius’ as they tripped through the darkening woods, or let Sirius hold his wrist long after the friendship bracelet had been tied on. It didn’t even feel weird the first time he’d stopped Sirius at the last bit of tree cover to lean in and kiss him goodnight. His heart had been in his throat as they separated and walked in opposite directions so they’d arrive home at slightly different times, from opposite ends of the street.
Some part of him believed this was all a product of the heat and haze and blurry lines of summer, and things would go back to normal when he returned for his final year of school. The structure of classes, basketball practice, and homework forcing him in line. The clearly applied labels for the hot girls, the losers, the smart kids, the jocks, the queers, the burnouts - making plain what was expected of him.
But there was hardly a blip as the air turned cold - the woods were still there, and so was Sirius, and so was the pull that led Remus there as well. The darker evenings seemed to make it easier to do the sorts of things that made him feel real weird later, when his blood had cooled and he was thinking with a clear head again - in the locker room or drinking warm beer between his buddies on someone’s mom’s couch. He’d laugh off their questions - “hey, did you get some off Lindsey on Friday?” and promise himself that last night, with Sirius, had been the last time.
He’d get home two hours later and glance upward before he even knew he was doing it, checking if Sirius’ bedroom light was still on. The resolve he’d found hours earlier was easily drowned by a half a dozen drinks and he’d stop at his desk long enough to type a message to the bedroom across the way from his:
“goin for a walk.”
The reply would come, “k,” and he’d be silently leaving his house again, taking the long way to the dark edge of the woods. He’d walk forward, blindly, until he felt Sirius’ hand grab his. Take a small step forward and feel their toes bump together. Tilt his head forward until he could feel the warmth of Sirius’ breath, smell the cold air and the dead leaves, and him. Hear his own voice -”hey”- and Sirius’ -”hi”. Close his eyes just as they started to adjust to the dark and kiss the boy who waited for him. His pulse would hammer but with all the judgements and thoughts that raced each other through his head, “this is weird” was never one.
In twelfth grade, he never knew if he was a virgin or not. Not that it was a question he was often asked, but things did happen that made him consider it. Movies, lewd conversations among his teammates that he tried to navigate as a gentleman who didn’t kiss and tell, rumours he heard spread - “Poor Liam, going to university a virgin”. Was Remus going to university a virgin? His longest-term girlfriend had parents who still went to church and said grace before dinner, and her guilt always pumped the brakes before they got anywhere close. As a red-blooded male with parents who were religious only when it suited them, it wasn’t considered wrong for him to do that sort of thing, so long as it was with a girl. He’d pull his hand out from under her skirt, mumbling an apology as he wiped his fingers off on his jeans.
“No, I’m sorry,” she’d said once, breathless, “I really want to, like really, really want to, but I can’t.” He had kissed her and assured her it was okay, recognizing the desire and restraint on her face, hoping the relief did not show on his.
He wanted to want it, but he knew want and that was not it. Want was feeling Sirius shiver as the cold crept through the trees and found them pressed together, Remus’ hands pushing Sirius’ shirt up his back, grabbing at him and pulling him in. It was Sirius’ fingers drifting down Remus’ abdomen to the waist of his jeans, over and over for weeks, until one night he finally held his breath and pushed his hand down the front. Sirius’ elbow bent awkwardly to work around the difference in their heights, his hand hot and tentative. Remus could feel his fingers trembling as they took hold of him. Sirius' eyes rose, and Remus could see the question -”is this okay?”- and the want, want, want, want. Remus nodded, exhaling all the air from his lungs in one burst, could hardly breathe through all the want, want, want, want.
Sirius never touched the brakes. He was sometimes nervous, or clumsy, or flustered, but if there was guilt there, Remus couldn’t see it. Remus carried enough guilt for the both of them. It was heavy and breathed down his neck on the walk home, but stood no chance against the heat, and the rush, and the want when he touched Sirius. Want overcame his better judgement again and again over weeks and months, as hands went from hesitant, to sure, to frantic.
There were seemingly endless firsts to have in the quiet of their dark woods. So many ways to completely undo Sirius, so many sounds that one mouth could make, pitch and urgency guiding him and reassuring him, letting him know when it was time to brace an arm around Sirius’ waist before his knees buckled under him. They learned together the things that made Remus grunt and dig his fingers into Sirius’ arms, and the things that made him knock his head back against the tree he leaned against, feet slipping on the wet ground as sobs and pleasure wracked his body in waves. They would watch each other’s eyes and mouths, foreheads together, those eager hands working and building, slowing, stilling, waiting for the ragged breaths to turn urgent, desperately trying to hold back until they reached the edge together, “i’m gonna- I can’t- I’m gonna-” and “okay, me too, just come, Remus, come for me”.
Sirius was the first to shrug off his coat, let it fall to Remus’ feet, and drop to his knees on top of it. Looking up, wordlessly asking “this okay?”, all that want making his eyes heavy and his cheeks pink. Another nod, “yeah”. His jeans were already opened and his chest squeezed itself empty as Sirius pulled his boxers down, letting his cock spring forward, hard and heavy and far more ready for this than Remus’ brain was. He nodded again as Sirius met his eyes, asking. Remus’ gasp was violent and caught in his throat as he felt the heat of Sirius’ mouth, watched as his lips closed around him and his pink cheeks hollowed, and he knew that nothing would ever be the same.
Remus learned when Sirius wanted to talk and when he wanted to listen. When he was in the mood to laugh and when something had pissed him off. The tone of his voice when he had seen Remus sit with his girlfriend in the cafeteria, and when she had sat with her friends. When he wanted to be kissed and when he wanted to be destroyed.
Still, technically a virgin. It meant something to Remus, somehow. He had twisted it in his mind to mean that he hadn’t had sex with a boy. If someone had asked, he might have been able to say no and not choke on the word.
But the want kept pulling them along as it always had, and now the need was there and it manifested itself daily in Sirius backed up against a tree trunk or on his back in the dirt, legs around Remus’ waist as Remus grinded into him relentlessly, embarrassingly. Remus didn’t have a clear idea of exactly how it all worked, but the need possessed him until one evening they were on the ground and he was shoving Sirius’ jeans down roughly, without a plan, just knowing he needed more. He needed to wrap his hands around the backs of Sirius’ thighs and push, and dig his fingers into all this new, white skin, and grab and pull and spread, and all the time driving his hips down into Sirius’, the friction hurting as much as helping by then.
Sirius’ short, quick moans in his ear heightened in pitch, becoming needy as he brought one arm from Remus’ back down to the button of his jeans. Remus was suddenly aware of the sounds leaving his own throat, like something feral as his body made decisions without him having consciously given the go-ahead. Before he could talk himself out of it, he tore away from the boy writhing underneath him and leaned back on his heels, giving himself the space to catch his breath, and think. Sirius’ eyes were glassy and searching as they stared each other down, chests heaving. Remus was the first to look away, and the first to speak, “Fuck, I’m sorry”, as he took in Sirius’ bare skin pushed into the ground, pine needles and dirt sticking to him where Remus had attempted to tear him out of his clothes.
“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Sirius had said, fingers twitching on his bare abdomen like they couldn’t decide where to go, “we can… I want to if you do”. Remus felt his blood move through his veins in one giant rush and busied his hands by pulling Sirius’ jeans back up, gentler than he had yanked them down. He brushed the dirt and debris from his skin, pleading with his fingers not to sink back into the soft flesh.
He wanted to, if Remus wanted to.
The guilt was easily ignored there in the woods, it was easy to forget the rest of the factors in his life when only the trees looked on, still and safe. Plenty of room for the want and the need and everything else he felt for this boy to wrap around him and hide him from anything that might encourage him to stop. It was dark and cold and wet - a gift - but now, not enough.
Sirius never asked him for anything more than he offered willingly. Remus only had to let him know where and when, and Sirius would be there, waiting. Remus told him just once that no one could know, and Sirius never spoke a word to anyone. Sirius never asked him to stop seeing girls or tried to talk to him at school. He gave, and gave, and only took what Remus held out to him. He would never ask for more than this, letting Remus take something that could only be given once, with the damp from the cold earth bleeding through the back of his shirt, clothes barely pushed out of the way, a boy possessed with need and shame on top of him. He wanted to, if Remus wanted to.
Remus wanted to, needed to, but not like this. Sirius never asked for anything, but deserved everything.
Remus pulled him by his hands to sit up, needing to kiss him but not trusting himself to lean over him on the ground again. Sirius’ face was questioning but patient, his legs spread out on either side of Remus, knees slightly bent. He held Remus’ wrists as his hands pushed through the hair at the back of his neck, knotted and clumped from the ground. Remus kissed him and prepared to make a conscious decision that he knew would change everything once again.
Terrified, aching with want, but clear-headed, he asked “do you want to come to my house tomorrow? After school. My parents will be at work till 5 or so,” a hard swallow, not ready yet to hear the response, “I have basketball but I can skip it, I can say I’m sick.”
“Yeah,” hands tightening and releasing around his wrists, eyes unwavering, “I do.”