#rames

“Remus, open up,” James called, knocking gently on the door to his friend’s flat. 

He’d been here before only a few weeks back, Remus having proposed a “home improvement” project that had left James thoroughly splattered with dark green paint and Remus almost entirely unwilling to leave his sofa for a full day afterwards. James hadn’t exactly minded that development, mind; Remus’ confinement to the sofa was hardly a deterrent to the other activities they’d gotten up to that evening.

The state of the door now belied the work that they’d put into it at the time though, with gouges scarring the frame and chips revealing the neutral oak colour below the varnish and paint they’d applied. 

“Come on, mate,” James tried again. “It’s just me here—no reporters, no Sirius, even. Just me.”

There wasn’t any noise coming from the flat, and if James was a less observant man, he might’ve assumed that Remus had fled somewhere else after having seen the papers. The whole area was thrumming with magic though, something low and hostile that James could feel pushing against his chest the longer he stood there, as if Remus had cast a series of repellant charms on his front door to keep folks away. 

To keep him away, too, he supposed. 

If he was honest with himself—and if he was a bit less tipsy than he was—he hardly should’ve expected anything different from Remus, not after having seen the article himself.

“Faithless Fraternity: Britain’s Most Eligible Auror Seen Frotting Feral Friend,” Skeeter had written, using a series of blurry photos which hardly showed anything at all, and which had to have been obtained unlawfully. 

The article proceeded to speak in semi-truths: 

James Potter, aged 29, was seen in his Bedford residence entertaining a male companion (true, Remus) this weekend. Potter, a junior member of the Auror Program’s recently established Ethics Board (outdated but true, although James bristled at the demotion he’d received at the hands of Rita’s shoddy research), is a known as a beater who “switch-hits” (speculative, he’d barely spoken about his sexuality with his friends, let alone the reporters at the Prophet), with a string of lovers in his wake ranging from esteemed healer Lily Evans (true, although their first relationship had ended within the two years that Sirius had gleefully predicted back in their seventh year) to Hobgoblins frontman Stubby Boardman (false, another of Sirius’ “amusing” and “clever” attempts to spin James up to be a more “alluring” and “eligible” bachelor—whatever that was supposed to mean). 

The virile visitor (had alliteration been strictly necessary?) bore all appearances of an old friend, entering the residence with a key that appeared to be within the surreptitious stranger’s possession (true, Remus had owned a key to James’ place since he’d moved in, as had Sirius, and Evans, and Peter, and…) before quickly divesting himself of all clothing (false, they’d spent the first half an hour of that visit chatting over tea before a single piece of clothing had been removed they’d made their way to the bedroom). 

The mystery man was quickly revealed to be some sort of dark creature, and the scars covering his body point to his being a lycanthrope (true, although James wondered if the papers would ever grow tired of the million ways they’d found to dance around Remus’ condition without calling it what it was). 

This is a man who we’ve elected to be responsible, to have discretion in the handling of ministry secrets (true, although James hadn’t been elected by the citizens of the wizarding community so much as by a jury of his peers)—can we trust a man who engages in such dark d’alliances?

He’d groaned at the time, laughing it off when Fenwick had slid it across the table, pints in hand. The photos were blurry, hardly identifiable, would’ve taken a good journalist—which Rita certainly was not—time and energy and resources to decode in order to make out who had visited him. In fact, the images were more damning of James than anyone, the tattoo circling his shoulder visible in each of the included shots, providing different angles of the first—and last—time that he’d let the other boys tattoo him, back in their sixth year. It should have been a normal tabloid piece, foolish and idiotic and utterly ignorable. 

Except—

Sources indicate that the creature comfort Potter has invited to his home is childhood friend and known werewolf, Remus Lupin.

That wasn’t meant to be there. 

James had missed it at first, so desensitised to Skeeter’s campaign against him and the Ethics Board that he’d written the whole piece off as a hatchet job, meant to tarnish his reputation among the upper echelons of wizarding society. She’d been on his case for nearly two years now, ever since he’d first been proposed for the Ethics Board—and ever since the Ethics Board had begun considering the ill-effects of irresponsible journalism in earnest, making rules about sources and fact-finding and accurate reporting. 

He’d become used to the defamatory comments that Skeeter had offered on his past relationships; that his last girlfriend was too pretty, that the one before that wasn’t pretty enough, that Evans—Evans, of all people—hadn’t been a smart enough match for him, that he ought to go out with one of the nice pureblooded witches that used to queue up outside of his quidditch games. She hadn’t bothered to comment on his male partners, but James presumed that had more to do with his own discretion than a sudden disinterest in reporting on his love life as if it was breaking news for the wizarding community.

Whatever the cause, Remus’ name had never come up before, and James hadn’t liked the way his stomach had begun to churn when he’d read it towards the end of the happy hour with his colleagues. He hadn’t been so drunk as to be incoherent when Fenwick had clapped him on the shoulder and tossed some change on the table before leaving, nor had he felt so impaired as to be an irresponsible apparator. 

Which is how he’d ended up on Remus’ doorstep, knocking quietly against the wood in hopes that he’d be let in. Remus, perpetual pessimist that he was, didn’t seem inclined to open up, and James couldn’t help from huffing quietly before sliding down against the door frame and tipping his head back as he waited. 

Remus had only been back in England for a year, his “Dumbledore appointed research” taking him out of the country shortly after graduation and casting him throughout the European and Asian continents for the better part of the last decade. He’d promised them all that there would be visits home, letters and packages whenever he could send them—but James, somehow, had been the only one who’d seen through the facade, catching the insurmountable fear hidden in Remus’ expression and knowing that there would be no such thing as casual contact. 

Peter was the first to lose hope—bursting into the home that James and Lily had shared at the time eighteen months on from their last sighting of Remus to inform the Potters that he was certain Remus was dead. Dumbledore wasn’t answering for where Remus was or what he was doing, he’d argued, he had to be hiding something. 

James hadn’t doubted the deception, he knew full well that Albus was a complicated man who derived at least some pleasure from holding the upper hand in any conversation he could. 

But there’d been a war on. 

He and Lily were attempting to rationalise their way through a parenting endeavor that had been doomed from the start, Sirius was going half-mad with his desire to be on every takedown, every stakeout, every operation—he hadn’t had the time to worry about whether Dumbledore had lied to them about what Remus was doing. It had taken most of his emotional energy to convince Lily that they should consider a period of separation, let alone to continue ensuring that the ones he loved—those that were close enough for him to protect, at least—were safe. Remus was a grown man, he’d made his decisions in the same way that James and Sirius and Peter had all made theirs. 

He hadn’t stopped worrying, of course. But if he’d learned anything from working with the Order, it had been how to manage multiple concerns at once—weighing them and ranking them in order of prominence and priority in order to keep himself and others from being killed. 

Quite frankly, Remus’ goings-on hadn’t made his top five. 

Then the Longbottoms had been killed, tilting his world on its axis. For the first time, he and Lily were seeing each other in daylight that hadn’t been steeped in war, and apparently, neither of them had liked what they’d seen. They’d tried counselling and reinvesting in their relationship, but without the threat of battle hanging over their heads, there was no longer some bigger, pressing concern to deal with. Small things became massive with no bounding event there to restrain them, and before James had known what was happening, their wartime romance had been buried. 

Blue ink, black feathers, and a 48-inch long parchment with stipulations of their divorce that he’d insisted upon had tied up the matter neatly, or as neatly as one could resolve the end of marriage—with promises to maintain a casual relationship, to remain an active member of their son’s life, to use his inheritance to keep both of them safe and cared for. 

Sirius’ optimism had been the next to go, drunkenly arriving at the flat he’d allowed James to move into and pounding on the door as if he’d lost his wand, saying all sorts of nonsense about how he couldn’t possibly show an interest in another man, not when Remus was out there waiting for him. It had taken two months for him to convince Sirius that however much he loved Remus, it didn’t change the fact that the war had ended and he hadn’t shown up—whether death or duty had kept him from them, they’d never properly determined.

Sirius had still hesitated to take Kingsley up on the offered dinner and drinks, but five years and a daughter later, James hardly thought he regretted the decision these days. They’d spent enough nights in the years since raising a glass to their friend, honouring his memory and reminiscing over hijinks, or telling Harry and Carina about their Uncle Remus’ proclivity for falling asleep during class over holiday dinners. He’d become a part of their history, a thread in the fabric of their lives that had been slowly unravelling since they’d graduated and was bound to be trimmed off eventually.

Even Lily had assumed the worst, pulling James to the side at Harry’s eighth birthday and informing him that Mungo’s had gotten word of a rash of werewolves being killed across the Eurasian continents, that they’d been given the medical reports, that there were at least three bodies that bore a strong resemblance to Remus, that James couldn’t breathe a word of it to Sirius if he wanted to keep his bits intact.  

So he’d stayed quiet, left quidditch and switched to administrative Auror work, kept his head down as he and Kingsley pulled together the Ethics Board, dated a string of unremarkable women and let Remus’ memory remain bright and unsullied in his mind. 

Then he’d encountered Remus in a back alley of Hogsmeade, having taken a detour en route to their ten-year reunion to grab a quick smoke—a habit that he’d sworn to Lily that he’d kicked, hence the hiding—and run directly into a hunched over man, knocking him to the ground unceremoniously before freezing as the stranger turned to face him. 

He’d been back for six months and hadn’t bothered to reach out to any of them, assuming that they’d moved on with their lives and would no longer be interested in his company.

It was another month before James had been able to convince him to sit down with the others, and another still before he’d relocated and granted a still-wary Remus access to his house. 

Things had moved quickly from there. 

James had begun seeing him strategically, showing up outside of the shop where Remus had taken up a job during his lunch break, meeting regularly to catch up on the ten years of missing time that had passed between them, convincing Remus that it was the least he could do to offer the small forest of his backyard as a location for his transformations.

James danced around his feelings for months, limiting the time they spent one-on-one in public, being effusive in his praise of Harry to ensure Remus was well aware that his role as a father took top priority, taking every opportunity to remind himself that it was wrong to think about his friend so much, like that. Like this. No matter how many times he’d tried to forget the way Remus’ attention made him feel, he couldn’t—his mind a map of all the places they’d seen each other, clandestine meetings buried beneath justifiable excuses for seeing each other.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that Sirius was the one to call his bluff, really. 

He’d been avoiding the conversation for months, dodging floo calls and claiming work conflicts—until he came home one night to Sirius in his living room, chatting quietly with Kingsley through his fireplace and explaining to his husband that it might turn out to be a late night.

What had followed was one of the most painfully awkward conversations he and Sirius had ever shared, with thinly veiled platitudes about how their friends would always love him no matter the choices he made, and how Harry would be delighted for him to have found a relationship so captivating, and didn’t he know that they’d all welcome the notion of Remus being back in their circle of friends again. 

Except James hadn’t been worried about his friend group, or Harry’s approval, or his own reputation. Because it hadn’t been just his on the line with whatever he chose to do next, it was Remus’ too. 

Remus, who’d shied away from the pomp and circumstance of a proper reunion with friends. Remus, who’d refused to attend the ministry ceremony where, for his work in researching and engaging with various wizarding communities, he’d been awarded a medal of honour. Remus, who’d found it far easier to accept a position outside of wizarding London than be a part of the masses.

Remus, who’d found safety in anonymity. 

Which is what made this whole situation so frustrating, really. 

Once they’d both agreed to things, they’d moved slowly. Subtly. Unnoticeably. 

Remus only ever went from his place to James’, and vice versa. There was no walking home together, no late nights out at a pub nestled into each other, no public displays of anything nearing affection. It was private, and sacred, and theirs, and for the first time, James felt himself wondering if this was it—his endgame, his last love, his forever. 

And then Rita Skeeter had blown it up, with twenty words of accuracy amidst an article of falsehoods. 

He knocked on the door again, more weakly this time. 

“Let me in, Remus. Please.”

A wave seemed to roll over him, simultaneously unsettling and relieving him in one go as Remus’ wards lifted and he heard the lock of the door click open. 

He winced slightly as he pushed himself off of the ground but stood and knocked softly on the door again. 

“Remus?” he asked, not daring to hope that he’d be welcomed in.

“Door’s open,” a voice called out, and James turned the knob gently before walking in. 

The flat was dark, and with no lights on the dusk of the evening cast odd shadows across the floor as James entered the space properly. No sign of Remus here, then. 

A thin stream of light spilled out from beneath Remus’ bedroom, and James approached it quietly before pausing at the door frame. 

“You might as well come in, you know,” Remus said drily, “it’s not as if I don’t know you’re there.”

James sighed but pushed the door open, only to see Remus laid down in bed and facing away from him, a dog-eared book resting half-open behind his head. 

“You’re not feeling well,” James murmured; a sentence, not a statement. “You should’ve mentioned, I could’ve brought—”

“I think you’ve done enough,” Remus said, although the cough at the end of the statement made it a bit less menacing than was likely intended. 

“I’ve—” James started, but felt himself deflate as he considered Remus’ words further. He had done enough, bringing Rita and the rest of the wizarding world’s gaze onto the two of them—but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel guilty. Remus being back, being a part of his life, was the best thing that had happened since Harry had been born. This conversation, this reassurance? It was a worthwhile fight to pick. 

“I don’t know how that happened,” James tried again, “there’s a hedge around the property and both of my neighbours were gone that week and—”

“James, I don’t care how it happened,” Remus grumbled as he turned himself around to face his partner. 

“I just care that it did.”

James sighed, closing the door behind him and leaning against it the same way he’d been doing since he was eleven and had been sorted into a dorm with Remus and Sirius and Peter. 

“I’m sorry, Remus,” he murmured, “ever since the I left the Magpies, Skeeter’s been following my career and writing all sorts of drivel about my lack of qualifications—as if I didn’t undergo the same testing procedures as everyone else—and has taken it upon herself to report on anyone I’ve ever interacted with. It’s—it’s poisonous, I know. One touch, one glance in my direction and she’ll never leave you alone.”

“We got the papers in Slovenia, you know.”

James felt his eyebrows furrow at Remus’ words.

“Elsewhere too, but for some reason the Balkans were especially fond of the British press reports,” Remus continued, slowly pushing himself up in his bed until he was sitting up. “I was gone for ten years, James. You weren’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” James asked incredulously. “You read the papers and what—believed everything she said?”

“Your reputation precedes you,” Remus interrupted. “You’ve been knee-deep in rumours about your partners and your lifestyle and your sexuality since we were barely out of school.”

“That’s not my fault,” James contested. “I didn’t ask for her to obsess over my personal life, Remus. You have to know that.”

“What if I don’t want to have to know it,” Remus said slowly. “Have you considered that? What if I don’t want to have to catalogue every time I touch you, waiting for the papers to get wind of it? What if I don’t want to know your pattern of burying every relationship you’ve ever started within weeks of Skeeter writing about you two?”

“What are you—”

“Like I said,” Remus mumbled. “I was gone, you weren’t.”

“That’s not fair to say,” James countered, “I didn’t want to subject any of them to the sort of scrutiny that I’m usually under.”

“And you want me to be?” Remus asked, drawing out the words slowly in something like disbelief. 

“No, I just—I know what the papers say.”

“That you’re a serial dater who loves girls and leaves them with alarming frequency?”

“Ta, mate,” James sighed. “Look, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the way I’ve handled each of my relationships, and I’ve made some choices that I shouldn’t have—I don’t deny that. But I don’t—I don’t see you like that.”

“You might want to rephrase that, James,” Remus said, scrubbing his face and squinting at the light. 

James reached behind him and dimmed the lamp, watching as Remus’ expression softened as the room grew darker. 

“You’re different,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and glancing up at Remus, whose face seemed unusually flushed. He reached out to feel for his partner’s temperature but froze as Remus shifted himself away from the touch. 

“James,” he murmured, “I don’t want to be another one of those girls who ends up in the prophet with some tell-all sob story about how they miss you and just want to get one more night with you. I don’t want to—”

“Remus,” James interrupted. “Do you know what makes you different from them?”

“I can come up with a list, yeah,” Remus coughed out, and James winced at the sound. 

“I’m a mess, Remus, if you believed the Prophet, that is. I’ve left a trail of spurned lovers in my wake, operated as some sort of player who has no notion of how to treat people, and have had absolutely no business doing the job that I’ve dedicated time and energy to creating in order to help people.”

Remus’ face fell. “I wasn’t trying to say that—” 

“But the thing is,” James continued, “nearly everyone I’ve been with for the last ten years has just wanted to be around me for the sake of what my reputation could give them. They didn’t care about my work—something that you know I feel strongly about; they hated the fact that I was co-parenting with Lily—something that you’ve never questioned, something you’ve encouraged, actually; they hated that I had Harry in the first place—the most important person in my life, and they hated him.” 

“I didn’t know that,” Remus mumbled. “I only knew that there were at least seven of them.”

“Like I said. If you believed what the Prophet was reporting, you wouldn’t know any of that. But the truth is, it should be easier to ignore all of that when you know what you know, or at least what I would hope that you’d be able to recognize, which is that all of those things were considerable dealbreakers for me.”

“That makes sense,” Remus said quietly, “but James, I don’t want to be left behind. I’ve done it once, run off and come back to see all of you thoroughly well-adjusted to life without me.”

“And that’s fine—” he paused, shaking his head as James opened his mouth to interrupt. “It is, really. I would hope that if I had passed, you all would find happiness in other things, live fulfilling lives and all that.”

James nodded. “It didn’t happen overnight, you know. It took…Sirius five years, and if I’m honest, I don’t think he ever believed that you were gone.”

“My point is that I can’t do that. Not again.”

As he spoke the words his face flushed again, and James was finally able to place the back of his hand on Remus’ forehead. 

“Remus, lay back down, will you?” he said softly. “We can keep talking, but you’re burning up.”

“It’s the cycle, James. This is normal, all things considered,” Remus replied, waving him off but sliding back down under the blankets, much to James’ reassurance. “But I mean it. I don’t want to be some ex that you never want to see again. I want to feel decent about the fact that I still have a tattoo of your initials at the base of my neck from sixth year, want to keep swaying around your living room after every social event we attend together, want to be—”

“Remus,” James said firmly. “I’m not breaking up with you.”

Remus blinked a few times in confusion, lifting his head from the pillow slightly as if trying to get a better look at James’ face. 

“You’re serious.”

“No, he lives across town,” James chuckled, his smile growing as Remus groaned at the tired joke. 

“Yes, I’m serious. For all of my flaws, all the insecurities I’ve had about the people I’ve dated, all the paranoia of people trying to jeopardise my safety…I haven’t had any of those with you, Remus.”

“That so?” Remus hummed into his pillow, and James grinned before running a hand through his hair gently. 

“You’re it for me, Lupin,” he whispered. “The only person who’s ever seen through the mess of things that surround me these days.”

He leaned down, pressing a kiss to Remus’ forehead as his partner’s eyes fluttered closed. 

“I want to marry you, Remus. That’s it, that’s my endgame—my whole plan. And one day, when I’ve figured out how to say that with better words and a better setup in a better situation—”

Remus’ quiet snores interrupted his thoughts, and James laughed quietly before turning the light off properly and pulling the blanket back. Toeing off his shoes, James slid into bed behind Remus and draped an arm over his partner’s waist before pulling him closer and kissing the back of his neck, where a seemingly hastily scrawled “JSP” marked Remus’ skin, each letter drawn there by a different roommate back when they’d all hit seventeen.