It was too much.
Sirius had lived with the knowledge of wanting to kiss Remus, wanting to be close to Remus, for weeks by now but the reality of the situation was almost too much for him to bear. It felt like a dream and yet there was no denying the heat of Remus’ body pressed so close to him and that grin on his face that made Sirius’ knees go weak.
When prompted to speak, Sirius could feel his voice catch in his throat and heat flow to his cheeks, feeling embarrassed by the many things that he was thinking and unsure if he would ever be able to voice them in a way that would make sense.
“I-,” he started, wanting to keep looking at Remus, but finding that doing so made him feel even more embarrassed, unable to handle the heat behind that gaze. He looked down, which only helped slightly, but suddenly made him all too aware of just how close they were standing. It made him loosen his grip around his flatmate slightly, one arm still around his shoulders, but the hand in his hair falling to his neck instead, suddenly made timid from having shown such blatant interest.
“Don’t stop,” he eventually managed to mutter, feeling his face grow hot at the request, even if it had barely been a proper request at all.

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Remus had asked in the interest of being good to Sirius, wanting to understand what wants such a sigh carried. He also asked because he was used to people knowing what they wanted from him, usually making for a more enjoyable time, but seeing blush across Sirius’ face deepen made Remus realize that perhaps this was not the case.
Sirius looked incredibly shy at the prospect of having to answer - of even having to look at Remus. When the answer came it was barely more than an abstract encouragement, inevitably making Remus grin, a little humoured by this facet. It had only been moments ago when Sirius had punched a wall to stop himself from bashing Kelly’s teeth in, and suddenly, that fire had knotted itself up to a point where Sirius struggled to let it surface.
Remus didn’t mind filling in the blanks.
He ducked his head to meet the downward tilt of Sirius’ face. With a smile still present at the corners of his mouth, Remus once again caught Sirius' lips in a whole-hearted kiss, his hands trailing from Sirius’ waist to his ribs to pull him closer.

Sirius was beyond relieved when Remus didn’t prompt him to speak further, instead just allowing himself to be handled and pulled back in.
It already felt easy to kiss Remus, eagerly returning his grip on Remus’ hair as Remus’ had trailed upwards, finding the touching thrilling, and a part of him craving even more, even if he didn’t have it in him to properly put it into words.
The amount of men that Sirius had actually been involved with was very limited, and none of them had ever actually taken the time to ask so blatantly what Sirius wanted. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to him that Remus would be different, but it still took his breath away, leaving him unsure of which leg to stand on.

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Something within Remus seemed to catch, hung up on the willingness with which Sirius met the embrace. It wasn’t subtle and yet it was, the almost imperceivable difference between feeling able to ask versus to give. It felt significant enough to take note of it.
As Sirius’ hands wandered upward, Remus’ once again dipped. Drawing a diagonal down the plane of Sirius’ back, Remus’ right hand shifted from Sirius’ ribs to the small of his back. There, it found a steady hold of the lining of Sirius’ trousers, a little sigh escaping him as he pulled him closer.

It was easy to follow whichever directions Remus gave him, the desire that Sirius felt for him so deeply engrained into him that it seemed impossible not to want him.
However, when Remus’ hands dipped and pulled him closer, Sirius suddenly seemed to remember exactly what their situation was, where they were actually standing, and the entire reason that they were there in the first place.
It filled him with a slight sense of panic, the idea that someone could suddenly decide that they needed a smoke and walk out there suddenly becoming too real of a worry to Sirius, as he once again broke the kiss, barely leaning away from Remus as he did so.
“They’re probably wondering where we are,” he found himself muttering, his voice hoarse and low, but he didn’t make any further moves to get out of the embrace, too taken with Remus to really break out of his orbit.

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Though perhaps not Remus’ own first choice for a development, he allowed Sirius to lean out of the kiss, noting with some satisfaction that Sirius had yet to withdraw from the embrace entirely.
Remus couldn’t help but huff a laugh into the narrow space between them, genuinely humoured at Sirius' attempt to bring themselves back to reality. Remus hadn’t forgotten, but as his eyes skimmed over Sirius’ expression, he realized it might not have been spoken for his sake, anyway.
“Why, have you cooled down enough?” he challenged, a smile at his lips as he leaned an inch forward as though chasing a kiss. Their lips never made contact, though. However blurry it might have sounded, Sirius had set a boundary, and Remus could do nothing but respect it.
Easing them both back into being at a distance from one another, Remus loosened his grip around Sirius. Slipping off the waistband of his trousers, the hold grew softer, less insistent; the way the embrace loosened showed less fight than the tease carried.
“No longer going to bash your student?”

While there really was no other way to read Sirius’ actions, he couldn’t deny that he was a little disappointed that Remus didn’t fight the point a little. He cherished it too though, grateful that he didn’t have to muster up even more willpower to return to the party, finding the others a dull and entitled lot on the best of days, and right now he couldn’t even imagine wanting to spend time with them over Remus.
“I’ll behave if he will,” he mustered, the voice less teasing than he had meant it to be, using all of his will to loosen his grip on Remus, allowing both of his hands to slide down his upper arms, not keen to leave the embrace, but knowing that they really should return to the party by now.
Arlo was willing to forgive him for a lot, but he knew that he would be disappointed if they just vanished for the rest of the night and Sirius couldn’t live with that.

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Remus’ smile widened at that; experience would show that Kelly didn’t have a record of behaving, his topics of conversation often enough laced with contempt for others. Looking at Sirius, Remus wondered if the statement carried any truth - if peace was really conditional.
“I’d’ve liked to see that,” Remus admitted, his voice more conversational as he finally let go of Sirius, taking a step backwards.
Though his limbs felt heavy, still feeling the weight of Sirius’ touch, Remus did what he could to relax back into a more familiar beat. His smile was genuine, but his gaze was no longer as loaded, the tension in his stomach beginning to dissipate.
Still, he stalled a step before managing to reach for the doorknob.
“You really don’t have to take his shite, you know,” he added, a little afterthought that carried a bit more timidness to his voice, though a smile kept pulling at the corner of his mouth. “He could do with suffering some consequences.”

Sirius missed Remus’ hands on him the second they were gone, feeling the loss of his hair between his fingers and the safety of his arms around him. It was stupid, mostly because it was something that was so very new to him, but it had just felt so right and Sirius was yearning to be able to get to have that again.
He just had to hope that Remus felt somewhat of the same way, or at the very least would indulge him again.
“I better not,” he said with a sheepish smile, suddenly feeling very aware of himself, feeling that the fight with Kelly had been ages ago, though rationally he knew that it couldn’t be much more than 20 minutes.
“Let’s head back inside, if I know Arlo he will already have given mr. Kelly a stern talking to,” he admitted, knowing that Arlo was very fond of him and would not look very kindly on anyone who went out of their way to antagonise him.

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There it was again, the way Sirius called Mulligan Arlo. It seemed that more noticeable while at the professor’s home, and though their teacher had every responsibility of keeping a safe environment for his students to learn in, Sirius’ trust in Mulligan’s swift intervention was beyond what Remus himself might have expected.
Once again, Remus made a note of it, but found no need to speak it out loud. Instead, he exhaled a little chuckle, glancing away to place the doorknob, pushing the door open.
He stole a glance back towards Sirius, his smile more of a grin, a shared little sense of camaraderie. “Yeah, that’ll probably do it just as nicely as a punch to the jaw.”

______
The evening had gone on without any further incident and Sirius was absolutely certain that that was only due to Arlo’s continued presence the rest of the evening.
Not that he had cared a lot having been placed next to Remus for the rest of the evening and having had a hard time focusing on much else.
This had also been part of the reason why Sirius had kept drinking the wine that Arlo so generously offered, having found that he needed something to do with his hands to stop himself from reaching for Remus. After all, the kiss had likely been nothing more than an attempt to distract him, at least that was what Sirius had tried to convince himself to try and win his sanity back.
However, now that he was unlocking the door to their dorm, Remus standing right behind him, the realisation that they hadn’t actually talked about the kiss was hitting him like a ton of bricks, suddenly back to feeling shy around his flatmate and filled with a nervous energy he didn’t know how to handle.
“I told you that Arlo was going to have talked with him though,” he assured Remus, the two of them having chatted their entire trip back home to the dorms, but as Sirius opened the door to their shared dorm, leaving them properly alone for the first time the entire night, he felt a little at a loss as to how to handle himself.
“At least he behaved the rest of the night.”

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As Remus followed Sirius inside, he only offered a vague, non-committal hum for a reply. Kelly certainly hadn’t dominated the remainder of the evening, but to be fair, Remus hadn’t particularly sought out conversation with him, and so the possibility existed that Kelly hadn’t so much behaved as he had quieted down.
“Sure, yeah.”
Besides the four first year students and Sirius, Mulligan had also extended his invitation to the two students remaining in the year between them, meaning multiple conversations overlapped and had, above all, remained academic, offering new dissertations for them to enquire into. Though Remus had chatted along, Sirius remained not only in his consciousness but eternally in the corner of his eye.
The way Sirius had retreated back into himself upon returning inside was likely perfectly justifiable to the others present; it wasn’t a reach to interpret the quiet distance as suppressed frustration, a fight that still lingered in the back of his mind.
Remus, however, didn’t think Kelly was what was keeping Sirius’ mind preoccupied. And it all but drove Remus insane.
No longer restricted by the context, but finding themselves so utterly, dizzyingly alone, Remus found that the only thing keeping him in place was the uncertainty of what precisely Sirius had been thinking about all night.
Lingering just a few steps inside by the coat stand, Remus’ attention was on Sirius, eyes flickering across his expression, trying to find his footing again.

As the door finally closed behind them and darkness fell upon them, Sirius found that he had no idea which leg to stand on.
After they had returned to the dinner, Sirius had found himself constantly drawn to Remus, withdrawing himself from the conversation, because he knew that he would have nothing intelligent to offer. Instead he had managed to busy his hands with the wine, which was now getting to his head, making the room spin slightly and leaving Remus as the only thing properly in focus.
Sirius had no idea when he had moved, unable to deny the itch that had remained in his fingers ever since they had had to move apart, but suddenly he had found his hands on Remus’ neck, pulling him down slightly and stretching up to press a starved kiss to his lips; kissing him as if it had been months and not mere hours since they had last kissed.

_________________

Remus had been waiting for Sirius to speak; this was better, though. A little unaccustomed with being kissed without invitation, Remus’ breath hitched the moment Sirius’ reached for him, a little stutter when his thoughts turned into static for a split second. Really, it wasn’t far from a chuckle.
Though Sirius himself was new, the scene wasn’t, and Remus reached for him without apprehension. Catching him by his waist, Remus leaned against him with the same sense of reignition, finding such a relief in getting more, greedy with Sirius’ affections.

It was incredibly juvenile but Sirius couldn’t help himself, finding that now that Remus had wanted to kiss him it was almost impossible to stop. It seemed absolutely impossible for him not to be greedy with Remus’ affection, having found that the kiss did live up to what he had been dreaming of, which did nothing to lessen his desire to keep Remus close.
Almost on their own accord, Sirius found that his hands were moving, one moving around Remus’ shoulders and the other once again finding his hair, eager to get as much of Remus as he was willing to offer.

_________________

When Sirius drew him closer, wrapping an arm around him, it really underlined the clumsiness of their outer coats, the fabric bulky between them. A quick alleviation, Remus’ hands moved from Sirius’ waist to readjust his grip, this time with his hands pushing beneath the wool of Sirius’ coat. Even though the fabric of Sirius’ shirt, his skin was far warmer and more inviting. than the chilled coat.
It once again affected Remus’ breathing, a little comment he didn’t get to speak out loud. Allowing himself room to speak, Remus’ lips left Sirius’, pulling him closer to make up for it.
“Can I take this off you?” he spoke into the corner of Sirius’ mouth, retrieving his hands far enough to tug at the lapels of Sirius’ coat.

In his eager to get to kiss Remus again, Sirius had all but forgotten that they were both still wearing their overcoats, having been too caught up in getting more and closer to even consider it.
When Remus moved his hands, first underneath his coat and then back out, Sirius almost felt his knees give out, feeling like absolute putty in Remus’ hands.
“Yeah,” he managed to breathe, hardly daring to move in case Remus would take it as a cue to move away from him, nor daring to speak too loudly, fearing that his voice would break if he did so.

_________________

Remus smiled at that, a little proper moment wedged into a feeling of urgency. It made him straighten his posture, leaving Sirius’ immediate proximity.
Despite the darkness of their room, Remus’ eyes still fell to the narrow space between them, watching as his hands ran up the length of the lapels of Sirius’ coat, fingers brushing beneath it to push it off of Sirius’ shoulders.
Shedding their outer layer forced Sirius’ hands off of him out of pure necessity, and for a moment, the space between them was heavy with an intimacy that wasn’t conveyed through touch. Remus had gently pulled the coat off of Sirius, tossing it blind over the back of a desk chair. Then, he removed his own, a task that required less attention. It offered a brief opportunity for Remus to simply look at Sirius, and the sight helplessly brought a smile to his lips.
Free of the confines of his coat, Remus stepped back into Sirius’ space, quick to catch Sirius’ lips in another kiss. It ebbed over with a want that suddenly felt far more feasible the fewer layers Remus felt beneath his hands as they once again found a hold of Sirius’ waist.

When Remus’ hands found Sirius again, so did Sirius’ with Remus, quick to wrap his arms around his shoulders as he stretched right back into the kiss, still finding the experience new and exciting. It was far from the first time Sirius had kissed someone, yet kissing Remus felt different to how he could remember kissing others had felt like and he felt drunk on it.
With his coat gone, he suddenly felt Remus’ hands much closer, something that felt much more daring now that they were actually alone and not just stealing a moment away from a dinner party.
It made his head spin so severely that he felt the need to cling unto Remus even further, almost as if he was afraid that he was either going to fall over or that Remus was going to disappear. It seemed juvenile, even to himself, but it still seemed like a dream to him to actually be kissing Remus, having given it a lot of thought since asking and the reality far outweighed the fantasy.

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The force with which Sirius reciprocated Remus’ touches and kisses still managed to take Remus aback, a testament to the restraint Sirius had exhibited during the weeks after Remus’ rejection. More than how fiercely Sirius sought him out, it was the knowledge of how seamlessly he had respected the fact that Remus hadn’t wanted him. Back then, mind you. Now, Remus found himself helplessly leaning into Sirius, not satisfied meeting him halfway.
Easing his hold of Sirius’ waist, Remus’ hands drew a diagonal across Sirius’ midriff, filling the space between them as his knuckles brushed against the lining of Sirius’ trousers. While Sirius’ actions ebbed over with desire, Remus wasn’t sure that constituted an invitation.
Forcing a moment of clarity, Remus ducked his head, turning his head as though chasing to place a kiss on Sirius’ cheek, Remus leaned back into Sirius’ space, heart hammering in his chest.
“Do you want to take these off, too?” he asked, and though there was the tilt of a tease in his infliction, the question was entirely genuine. His hands had stalled at Sirius’ waistband, heavy in the pause, but intent on hearing Sirius’ reply before reaching for his fly.
“What do you want to do?”