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They walk in the dark.They walk in the dark, and they're a joint silhouette. They wake the night. They’re loose jeans outlining hips, and razor eyes, and wands up sleeves like they're invincible; they can't be caught. Underneath apartment windows, they push each other into walls. They laugh and shout, drunk on the night and the cheap firewhiskey Sirius swiped from James’s parents’ house. He throws the bottle and it shatters. Glass catches streetlight like a brand.
They own the alleyways. They're kings without crowns, wreathed in smoke.
James leads. He always has. He's a pretentious fuck, really, but they're willing to ignore that. They focus instead on his loyalty, his strength. The way his hand slicks back, nervous, through his tangled hair. He wants Lily Evans and they cheer him on. Best friends don't desert each other, even when they're undeniably pretentious fucks.
Peter follows. His jeans don't hang quite so low as the others, and he keeps shoving at his wand so it won't fall out of his sleeve. He's less than James’s careless grace. Less than Remus’s clear-eyed serenity. Less than Sirius’s wild beauty. He is the guest, and he doesn't belong. Underneath apartment windows, he’s always the one shoved. Never the one pushing.
It is an unspoken truth and an unwinding. It’s the way the city looks when it’s theirs. They know eventually Peter will have to go.
And Sirius, with his manic smile and the way he runs. He's rough edges. An accident. He blurs at the corners and he cut his hair because he knows Remus likes it that way. He's the only one who sheds his skin easily. It slides off like water and glass and then he's the stalker of the night; he's Padfoot and he's infinite. He drinks firewhiskey until he forgets what his brother chose.
Remus is at his side, and when they bump and shove in the shadows of the alley, Remus and Sirius touch and they're alive. At night during the school term, when Peter and James are sleeping, they lie side by side under enchanted canopies and whisper. They talk of Peter, and James, and Lily, and Severus--Snivellus--Snape. Sometimes Remus cries. He doesn't cry often, though, because he’s the stoic, calm one; he's the eldest and the most polite, and he knots their ragged band together. It took a long time for Sirius to convince him to wear his jeans low, and the indrawn breath Sirius took when he finally did isn’t a secret to anyone.
Whenever they lose themselves into their other forms, whenever they slick off their skin and flow into the night, it's Remus who feels the weight of it. Sirius is the one who loves it. He jostles up alongside Remus--Moony, then--and ties him down; he keeps him safe. He nuzzles at his mouth and neck and takes the lust of the wolf like it's a gift. Even Peter, twitchy and neurotic, assumes his rat’s body naturally. He nips James’s heels and vanishes into tree stumps and down holes. When they're all together, fur and claws, he feels more a part of the group than he does anywhere else.
But Remus holds the guilt. He takes it on willingly, like a blanket across his shoulders, and then he suffers. Because he can't feel the raw exhilaration of it, the high Sirius gets off losing himself--because he’s more comfortable in his loping, rangy human body than in the snarling wolf--he remembers what he was before Fenrir Greyback, before he arrived at Hogwarts. He blames himself for the way his friends have been absorbed into the night. They’ve become nocturnal. They stalk the streets and hiss like cats and it’s all for him. Sacrificed sleep and broken dreams, for half a man and half a wolf.
Now, under the bridge, James whoops and increases his pace. Peter’s at his heels. Struggling to keep up. Their shadow pulls away from Sirius and Remus. It dances and pulls, and the edges stretch until they climb the buildings and flicker on the darkened shift of brick and steel.
Midstride, Sirius changes, and then he’s the black dog, running at Remus’s heels. Shepherding him. He nips his ankles and wreaths between his legs, and Remus trips, but the dog steadies him again. There’s a curious whine like a laugh, and his cold nose nudges into Remus’s hand.
James is pushing Peter. He’s getting him up against the wall and shoving him and even from here Remus can see the way Peter lets him. He’s drowning, unobserved. He’s caught up in something bigger than himself. He lets James catch his shoulders and throw him back. Their laughter rings. They turn and chase and run.
Tomorrow, they’ll be three and one again. Or maybe two and one and one, depending. Now, though, they’re four, and two and two, and they’re electric and elastic and unstoppable, and they cheer for James regardless of it being Lily Evans or Peter Pettigrew. It’s all the same, underneath the streetlights. Glass and asphalt and the way the firewhiskey smells on Sirius’s breath.
And here’s James catching Peter, by the waterline, and pinning him against the bridge strut, and then Remus buries his face quickly in Sirius’s long black coat, because some things aren’t meant to be seen. Some things are meant only to be heard.
Peter says, "James, James, James," and their lips collide over the trick and paddle of the water in the canal.
“Well, fuck,” Sirius says, slurred, halfway between dog and man.
“We’re drunk,” Remus says. “They’ll forget it by tomorrow.”
“Peter won’t.”
Looking at the way the two boys are pressed together--hips and chests and lips and shadows, joined every way they can be--Remus is inclined to agree.
--And it’ll break his heart, he thinks.
But they’re all living with broken hearts. They wouldn’t be kings, otherwise, dancing with each other, circled in smoke. They wouldn’t walk in the dark and chase pretty girls with auburn hair. They wouldn’t hex Slytherin assholes and hold each other when they cry.
“I can’t watch,” Sirius says. “He’ll be all over Lily again, when the term starts up again.”
And he shifts again, and sluices his skin and runs. He runs like shadow and ice and the way the stars look after dusk. He runs like he put those footprint patches on the moon.
Remus scrambles to his feet and follows. He doesn’t have a prayer of keeping up, though he’s as fit from Quidditch as he’s ever been. Sirius is untouchable. He’s already bounding out of sight. Curving left around the canal, and into shadow. It’s only then that Remus slows. Accepting the inevitable.They are two kings blending together under the bridge, and one king slowing with a stitch in his side, and one king keeping his promise with the wind. They run and they fall down and they collide.
Behind him, Remus can hear Peter and James separating, and knows that if he looked now he would see tender eyes and swollen lips and promises that can’t be kept. He knows he’d see the city after dark.
“Did Padfoot take off?” James says, in Remus’s general direction.
Instead of answering, Remus says, “The canal.”
James turns, and so does Peter, and then they’re all three standing in a line, heartbeats calmed for the moment. And they’re kings, but they’ve got crowns now, because the light off the canal is fracturing on their foreheads. Like halos. Like they’re immortal and they’re angels--or maybe like they’re devils.
James puts his arm around Peter.
--And maybe something will change, Remus thinks. Maybe they’ll wake up tomorrow and the first thing James thinks of will be Peter. Maybe Lily Evans will realize how Severus Snape’s been looking at her, with those starstruck eyes. Maybe Sirius won’t go off and get arrested.Last time, he smashed a car. He broke a window. He was made of anger and the glass cut his wrists, and he woke up in St. Mungo’s with a recommendation for therapy and his first use of magic warning. Remus was there to hold his hand and let him cry.--Not tonight, Remus thinks. Please, not tonight.
And then all of a sudden there’s that firewhiskey smell and a thunder of paws and Padfoot comes running from the side roads, tumbling over himself, barreling towards Remus. Remus has only just enough time to get himself down so that Padfoot hits him with half the force he would have.
They go rolling over and over, and James is laughing. James’s laugh is like music; it crackles. It sears itself into the air and it makes the city theirs again. It brands the streets in red and gold. On his back, with Sirius shifting into human form atop him, Remus closes his eyes and listens to Peter’s hesitant chuckle bubble up beneath.
“Come with me,” Sirius says, and he’s pulling Remus up. Pushing him before him. Remus stumbles, stumbles, runs, and Sirius is at his back, breathing on his neck.“Run,” he says, and they disappear.
They run until they’re somewhere else, and then Sirius is slamming Remus up against the wall, and every other time felt like play, but this doesn’t feel like play. This feels like James and Peter. This feels like Sirius means it.
And then he’s molding himself to Remus. He’s fitting his curves and he’s touching him everywhere and there’s fire in between them and they’re kissing. They kiss like the end of the world and the beginning. They tumble and they’re not coming up.Remus doesn’t know how he didn’t see--Doesn’t know how he didn’t understand--Sirius tilts Remus’s head back, mouths his jaw like he’s the wolf all over again. And there’s just this. Storm cloud and ash and the city rumbling at night.Somewhere else, Peter and James doing the same thing.--What does this mean? Remus thinks, but he knows what it means.
Low jeans and the way Sirius’s breath hitched.
They break apart and they look at each other and Remus thinks he can hear the streets applauding. He thinks he can see the world carving out a space for them. Remus and Sirius. Sirius and Remus.
“I won’t forget this in the morning,” Sirius says.
“I won’t forget this for as long as I live.”
And Sirius grins a wolf grin, a fanged smile, and he leans forwards and they kiss again. They’re the dark and the light and the good and the broken. They’re survivors. They’re kings without crowns, and they walk in the dark.