Is It Over Now?

Chapter Eight

Remus wakes to the foreign feeling of a weight on his chest, warm and slowly rising and falling, heartbeats crashing into one another as if they were meant to always be this close. The lion looked at the sight before him, the boy with the dark curls and slightly bruised lips, the tan had long faded into only the whisper of a warm glow, and the spray of freckles that one could only see from this close. If he'd had a camera he would have taken a picture.

Gray eyes soon opened to meet his one as the younger boy stirred, and Remus couldn't help but wonder if the other would slip away and pretend that nothing happened at all now that the sun was shining once more. If the younger teen would only come to him at nights like some sort of secret that he couldn't bear to have others know, or not come at all and regret everything with the clarity of day.

But then there's a soft smile on the other's lips, something a little mischievous as if the Gryffindor common room was wearing off on the younger more than any snake would want it to - though Remus supposed that it could easily just as well be Barty and Evan's doing a well. There's a soft press of lips against his own, and a warm hand on the older boy's hip, pressing him down and thumb passing over the bite mark there as the shirt rode up from sleep, as if to give it a new meaning. Remus almost thought that it worked.

The touch was there and gone before the Gryffindor could even do anything to return it, just the brush of something - a promise that this wasn't going away just because the stars were no longer painting pictures upon the sky like stolen gems.

Regulus pushes himself off of the couch and onto the floor, looking down at the older boy expectantly in a way that makes the lion want to pull the other close so that they might go back to only a few moments before when each were pleasantly asleep and moving despite the ache deep within his bones wasn't something that he had to do.

"Come on," Regulus says, his voice barely above a whisper because there was no need to be loud, to demand more of one another in such a way, when others weren't around and all else was quiet anyways.

The younger boy holds out his hand to the Gryffindor and Remus takes it, cool hands meeting warm ones as water and fire danced around one another in a way that could only prove fatal if things continued on exactly as they were. Remus took the hand and let himself be pulled to his feet by the younger. He didn't let go even as they left the common room, guiding the younger boy along as the moon pulls at the sea.

He wasn't going to allow them to become a catastrophe.

—-

The pair walk down to breakfast together, the younger dressed in the nice clothes like armor as the older dressed in the muggle ones that he wore just the same, their sides pressed so tightly to one another that if the layers of fabric weren't there one couldn't tell where the elder boy ended and the younger began.

The boys sat down a little ways from two Ravenclaws that had few too many differences in their features with one another to quite be siblings or anything of the like and neither of them needed the faint reddening of the girl's from the studying glances to know what they were to each other.

As the meal went on though, the two pairs found themselves talking to one another, each of them savoring the idea of speaking with another that didn't know the exact same things of the past day as they did.

The conversations were interesting enough, as the Ravenclaws were both seventh years, staying at the castle under the guise of studying for their NEWTs. Debates and theories came quickly

Regulus's knee bumps into Remus's as they all speak and the lion savors the warmth of the star with the heart of one, that the other stays long after most would have pulled away from an accidental touch.