Excerpt: The Slumber of Endymion

Sirius stands up, and Remus, with his dead eyes, follows his movement with his gaze. He rounds the table, ignoring the crumbs on the counter and kicking the dirty socks out of the way. "Moony," he says, and his voice is rough. He holds out his hands to Remus, and Remus doesn't respond right away. So he takes Remus' hands in his own and pulls, pulls until Remus is standing up in front of him.

"I'm scared," Sirius whispers, locking his gaze with the other man's.

"I am too," Remus replies.

"I can't face this all by myself," Sirius continues. He is still holding both of Remus' hands. He doesn't remember how to let go.

"'We must all hang together,'" Remus responds with a rueful smile, "'or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.'"

It is something Dumbledore has said months ago, and it is something that Benjamin Franklin has said decades ago. Sirius thought he had understood it when Cassie had died two months after the Battle at Hogsmeade, but he knows he understands it now.

"Greyback," Sirius starts, distastefully, reluctantly spitting out the name, "wants us to hang separately."

"Then we ought to hang together," Remus suggests.

This is only going to tear them apart if they let it, and he isn't the only one to have realized it. They may be bereft of hope, they may be scared and pulled too tight at the seams, they may be struggling to hold on. But they are bereft of hope, scared and pulled too tight at the seams, and struggling to hold on /together/. And that, Sirius determines with a tiny surge of relief, is the difference.

Remus is reaching up now, sliding his fingers over Sirius' neck, brushing over his ears, and then lacing through his hair. They are nose to nose, and Sirius wonders silently what this means. He puts his hands on Remus' waist, over his hips, etching the grooves of his corduroys.

"I want you to kiss me again," Remus tells him in no uncertain terms.

Sirius raises a brow. "I don't recall ever kissing you."

"You kissed me. On the sofa at Prongs'." Remus' tone is insistent.

"I didn't kiss you. You kissed me."

"I didn't," Remus pouts. "You leaned forward and closed your eyes and tilted your head, like..."

This time, Sirius does kiss him. He kisses Remus and swallows the words that were growing there, silencing them both and weaving them together like two pieces of yarn from the same spool. They belong like this, he thinks, giddy and heady and tangled together in a mishmash of emotions and skin and electricity.

They are sloppy and silly, unsure of themselves or each other, even though neither of them is new to this. But Sirius has never kissed Remus and Remus has never kissed Sirius, and now they cannot seem to stop. It is like Sirius has never met Remus before and he has to memorize those features for an examination, like he has to know exactly what Remus' kisses taste like, and how he smells like shampoo and pine needles and gauze, and how his skin is rough and smooth and rough again as Sirius' thumbs delve under his sweater; skin, scar, skin, scar.

But the air of the kitchen is too thick to breathe, and they finally stop. They are touching in a hard, smooth line from chest to knee, they are afraid to let go of one another lest they break apart forever, and it seems a very real possibility. Now it is just stillness, Remus with his hands in Sirius' hair, elbows crooked over Sirius' shoulders, and Sirius with his hands overlapping behind Remus at the small of his back.

"We do need a nap," Sirius finally says, and he doesn't mean in separate beds with separate blankets in separate rooms. He means together, he means won't you sleep in my bed tonight, Moony, I'm afraid of the moonlight. He means never to be apart from this feeling again.

If they never let go of each other, they will most assuredly not hang separately. They will hang together.