#penultimate chapter!

Beneath it all is a sealed baggie of cash pilfered a note at a time from the tithing box and our passports, freshly swiped from the lock box behind Headmaster's desk.

It’s dark out, proper dark. He was meant to be here by now. I let the bag drop, its thud muffled by the mossy bramble beneath my window. The night air is silent and so is my phone, taunting me from my pocket. I take it out again.

No calls. No messages. The signal’s strong, with four bars etched out on the tiny screen.

He’ll come. He’ll come. He’ll come. He'll come.

Heavy footsteps trod the far end of the hallway.

He won’t leave me here. He won’t go without me. And I won't go without him.

The footfalls slow as they near my door. Voices, deep and hushed. They think I'm asleep. I slide back into bed, quiet feet avoiding every creaking floorboard. I close my eyes and listen for his whistle.

He’ll come. He’ll come. He’ll come. He'll come.

The lock clicks and the doorknob turns.

He'll come. He'll come. He'll come. He'll—

“Hey, Janus. Wake up.”

I jolt, my room dissolving around me. Remus’ face swims into view, eyes wide, with pastel smudged on his cheek, his temple. My shoulder where he’s shaken me awake.

I’m naked beneath the blanket that had been tossed over the back of the couch.

“You were having a nightmare,” he explains, creeping back just a bit, like he only just realized how close he’d gotten. He's handling me with kid gloves and I want to snap him out of it. I want him to kiss me, to grope me. Feed me cheap whiskey and cheaper lines.

I want him to beg me to fuck him and prove that’s all he ever wanted out of this.

Instead he watches me from a respectful distance, sitting on the floor with knees hugged to his chest, one hand hovering close, but not touching me.

The bonfire’s worth of candles he’d lit around me burn low, loads already dark in soot-covered jars.

“I dozed off,” I say, testing my voice. It cracks and I reach up to touch my face.

My hand is wet.

“Here,” Remus murmurs, painfully gentle, and passes me a cloth. One side reads Blick Art Supplies, the embossed letters fresh and smooth under my thumb. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s clean.”

I look away, dabbing at my cheeks, and my eyes fall on his open sketchbook. The page is covered with a full-color drawing of… my elbow? “You’ve finished.”

Worry lifts, sunshine spreading across his face, and Remus absolutely beams at me. “Yeah, lemme show you…” He lifts the book and sits, back to the side of the couch. He angles the sketchbook up on his knees so I can see over his shoulder without moving. He starts flipping back through the now full book, past countless sketches.

Sketches of me.

My leg, my ankle, my hands. Three separate studies of my left knee.

My scar.

Nothing salacious or tasteless. No details of my dick, my ass. Even my nudity looks… cherished. There are dozens of sketches, page after page after page of what had been a nearly empty sketchbook when he'd started. Remus must've been at it for hours.

“How long…”

He looks up at me, then shrugs at the window. A patch of pink along the skyline heralds the coming dawn. “You were drifting after I started the second piece.” He finally gets to the first of his sketches. It’s a full-body portrait of me, sprawled on his couch like a thirsty whor—

“You look like a Royal,” he whispers, smudging the edge of my elbow. The one on the paper, at least. I glance at the bit of pastel his hand had left behind on my shoulder and wish…

Almost absently, he reaches for a soft forest green. I watch as he blends it with the grays and yellows, giving his drawing an almost three-dimensional look.

“How long?” I ask again and he blinks up at me.

“Oh, ah…” His watch sits on the floor, the band coated in green pastel, and he picks it up. “You’ve been out for, I dunno… Um… six, seven hours?”

That’s a full night’s sleep.

Two nights.

Two fucking nights.

I've slept—unaided—two fucking nights in longer than I cared to calculate. And both of those nights were here in this flat.

My eyes land on the tea cup still sitting on Remus’ rickety table. Perhaps not unaided.

I rise and the blanket slides off me. I grab at it, pulling it tight around body. “What did you give me?” I keep my voice steady, or try to at least.  Rough from sleep and whatever I was blathering on about in my dreams, it comes out shakier than I want. I point at the cup. “Was it in the tea?”

“What?” He pushes up to his feet, still holding that damned sketchbook.

“The tea, you feckin' spanner!” I shout, losing my battle for calm. “The fucking tea! What did you give me?”

He bristles, a flash of genuine—or West-end-worthy—hurt in his eyes. “It’s just… it’s just Tetley, man. It’s just cheap tea from Aldi.”

I pick up the cup and sniff at it. “You put something in it, then. You drugged me. You—”

He closes the sketchbook and lays it on the couch, almost reverently, before turning back to me. He shakes his head. “Nah, mate, I don’t fuck with that.” Jaw clenched so tight it twitches, he takes the mug from my hands and throws back the last dregs. Then he takes the tea bag and squeezes out what’s left into his mouth.

“A few drops won’t—”

Without breaking eye contact, he puts the entire bag in his mouth and yanks off the string and the tag. He chews and swallows the whole thing. “Ah…” he says, opening wide. Bits of leaves remain stuck to his teeth, dotting his gums and inner cheeks and tongue. But the rest is gone, down the hatch.

“You didn’t… you didn’t drug me,” I say, taking the cup back from him and inspecting it.

He watches me and washes down the leaves with what was left of his own over-steeped tea.

“But, no… It's not…" My throat is tight and the mug trembles in my hand. This had to be a trick. "The only two nights in years that I’ve fallen asleep without my pills, without sativa, without any of it…” I shake my head, but he puts down his empty cup and steps closer, earlier defensiveness melting. I stiffen my jaw but I can't stop the quaver in my voice. "It's not…"

Deep brown eyes watch mine, and he takes my mug and sets it down on the table. My right hand’s gripped tight on the blanket but he reaches for my empty one. “How 'bout we go for three nights sometime?” The heat hiding behind his eyes all night has softened into something gentler, something warm and kind and…

Familiar.

I look away.

His hands wrap around mine, smudges of green and gold and pink stuck in the rough callouses at his fingertips and under his nails. “I knew you just wanted to get off,” I whisper. A lie. 

“I'm not talking about fucking.”

I close my eyes. I know.

Remus brings my hand close to his chest, strong, rough hands moving so gently. The dissonance is distracting. His heart hammers his rib cage, my palm. Our first night together, I’d fallen asleep with that steady beat against my back. I thought that’s all I’d needed; satisfaction and warmth, strong arms wrapped securely around me. Salt and sex and sweat between us.

But tonight… last night… I fell asleep hard up and untouched. Watched.

By him.

“Janus, I… You’re…” Remus whispers, then stops. “I don’t know what this is,” he finally says. He strokes my hand, tracing each finger from knuckle to tip. "But this past year, I…"

“Spent the year pining away for me, painting away your heartache?” I try to sound flippant but the way my voice cracks, it comes out more like hope.

He’s quiet so long I finally risk a peek.

Remus smiles back at me and steps even closer. “You really wanna know?” He waits for my nod. “I've spent the year fucking anyone—everyone—who gave me a second glance. I spent the past year trying to forget all about you.”

“Did it work?” I ask. Hope feels almost good now. Sirens ring in my head and I beg the universe to make him say yes, of course he'd forgotten all about me, hadn't given me another thought after the second hot guy who railed him. I beg the universe to make it quick.

Before I have time to beg him to say no.

“I kept your clothes,” he reminds me, that tiny fact meaning far, far more than it should.

“I kept yours, too,” I whisper and his face just bursts in a smile.

“You did?” he says, moving one hand to my back.

“Aye,” I nod, the naked joy in his eyes pulling me in. "I did."

~

I can’t tell who moves first, but Janus is the one to open his mouth, fingers twisting in my hair, as the blanket falls around his feet. After hours of touching every inch of his skin with my eyes, my pastels, I finally get to feel him once again under my hands.

His body shakes against mine. “Are you cold?” I break away long enough to whisper between kisses to his jaw, his neck. Fuck, how I’ve dreamt about this. Sweet. Salty. Soft. How I've missed this.

How I've missed him.

He shudders, pulling me closer. But he doesn’t answer, just starts tugging at my collar. My shirt and my belt come off easy but his hands shake too much to work the buttons on my trousers.

I pull back.

Molten gold fills the room as the sun breaks free of the buildings outside. The light catches in his eyes.

And in the tears welling at the edges.

I halt his hands and bring them up to my lips. “You’re not cold,” I whisper against them, willing their trembling to ease. His eyes are wide but his pupils tiny pinpricks. “You’re afraid.”

“I’m not afraid to fuck you, Remus.” His words are harsh but his voice shakes as much as his hands.

“Didn’t say you were.” He turns away from the sunrise, scar burning bright in the dying candlelight. 

I touch his cheek, my thumb tracing that perfect scar. “I won’t hurt you,” I whisper and his eyes squeeze shut.

“I told you I could kill you in your sleep,” he says. “With a dull teaspoon.”

“I don’t just mean your body.”

His eyes open wide and a tear slips down his cheek. Pills to sleep. Nightmares.

I shake my head, both arms now tightening around him. “I don’t know who hurt you, but I promise you, I’m not him.”

A choked sob spills from his lips and he buries his face against my neck. I hold him as he cries, watching the sun march across the floor, up his foot, his leg, his ass. The light reaches my arms around his back at the same time his tears slow. He sighs and I nuzzle against his hair. “Maybe you’ll introduce us someday and we’ll fuck him up together, yeah?”

He laughs, wet and short, but his shaking stops and he straightens, putting distance between us. He stands tall and meets my eyes, searching.

But just as I begin to miss the closeness, he seems to find what he’s looking for. With another little sigh, he wraps his arms around my back and settles against my other shoulder.

“Aye. But you're buying more towels,” he whispers. "Unbleached cotton bath sheets. Long staple."

They agreed to each focus on a different aspect of the project, and reconvene at a later time. Lily would be working on the riff on the thought-clearing potion she had used to imbue the acetate sheet in second year: it was a draught to help with the effects of particularly potent Confundus Charm, and had seemed to work well on that occasion. She needed to see if the potion worked on glass, which was a much less porous material than acetate and ran the risk of not absorbing enough potion to work. Sirius would work on a property-sealing charm, to make sure the potion-imbued glass would maintain its magic. He’d also experiment on transfiguring the already imbued acetate to glass, and see if it worked the same or lost its clearing abilities. It was a long game of trial and error on every part.

Peter, they agreed, could sneak into Filch’s office and see if there were any old pairs of spectacles in the lost-and-found trunk, so they could experiment on those. Mostly though, he and James, who - bless his heart - was extremely busy as it was, were meant to keep Remus distracted and to avoid him getting suspicious. Luckily, Remus was even more busy than James, and was sometimes so focused on being the one doing the avoiding that he never suspected anything. 

Thankfully, as eventful the weeks around Imbolc had been, Sirius still had the most free time and the loosest schedule, so he was able to make great progress without being noticed. He even came up with a new name for their invention, the “Bespectacles”, a crasis between “bewitched” and “spectacles”. Lily’s first reaction to this was an earnest, resigned facepalm, but the term eventually caught on (James loved it, and suggested trademarking it). Lily had been feeling very guilty about the fact that she didn’t spare any time to help as much as she wished, but Sirius and James convinced her to not worry too much about it- Sirius, in particular, insisted on relinquishing all his responsibilities and to let Lily take all the credit when she’d eventually gave Remus the gift. She was sitting for NEWTS in all but two subjects, was Head Girl, and managed to keep up with all the Marauders’ shenanigans; the girl had well and truly earned it. Plus, he knew how much it meant to her. 

It was around the end of February, and Moony’s birthday was quickly approaching. Sirius, Peter, James and Lily were sitting around the Gryffindor common room fireplace, testing their first completed prototype of the Bespectacles. Sirius and Remus were in one of their rows, thus Remus was promptly avoiding all of them - Sirius was trying to suppress the frustration that boiled just under the surface of his skin. 

They were trying to figure out if the pair of glasses James was now examining worked, but it was hard, seeing none of them had any trouble reading. 

“Why me???” Peter was pleading to Lily and James. Sirius had just suggested confounding him lightly, to see if that did anything, “Why do I always have to be the one you try your experiments on?”

“It’s not our fault you’re literally a lab rat, Wormtail” Sirius snickered.

“We could try rearranging the letters of a text and see if we can read the gibberish?” James suggested. 

“The problem’s not the text, though, it’s the reading part in the brain that can’t make sense of it” Sirius explained, remembering what he’d read in his research back in first year. Muggles called it “word blindness”. 

“The potion and the spell combined should act on the person’s mind,” Lily expanded “not on the text itself. It should be as if a spell-checking quill acted on your hand instead of tidying up the writing afterwards.”

Everyone fell silent, deep in thought. They had all tried the glasses on, without any visible effect or improvement, except for James who couldn’t see anything at all, of course. They had no magnifying effect either, and so they didn’t give Sirius that dizzying feeling James’ glasses usually gave him. 

“Give here, Prongs”

James passed Sirius the Bespectacles prototype, and he put them on once again, this time studying himself in the compact mirror. 

“Merlin, Pete, could you have dug up a trendier pair?” Sirius scoffed, sarcasm dripping from each word.

“Listen, it was between this and a monocle!” The blond boy pouted in response.

“I mean, it makes sense there wouldn’t be a lot of these in the lost trunk, if people really need them they can just use a Summoning Spell.” Lily interjected, the voice of reason as always.

Sirius studied his face in the mirror. The glasses were wired-rimmed, like James’, but significantly smaller, oval, and slightly tilted upwards. The bridge was very narrow and curved, and the sidepieces wrapped all the way around his ears and dug into the tender flesh behind his lobes, where Moony's tongue would often linger. Sirius sighed.

“Still, they look dreadful.” he sentenced, forcing himself to snap out of it. Yes, he was still angry with Remus, but he simply couldn’t imagine his beautiful boyfriend’s face marred with those. He was terrified they were going to make him stop fancying him. He silently hoped that day never came, and felt his grudge untangling slightly in his stomach.