#rlsb

Chances are there is nobody there anymore. That’s what Head Command cited, when they ruled out the possibility of sending search and rescue. The message was sent twelve years ago, the admiral said, whoever sent it, they’re dead by now. 

But those twenty two seconds played on repeat in Remus’ head. He woke up hearing them, fell asleep replaying them. Then, one morning, the final word, the please, appeared in his dream, and he knew he had to do something.

He’s had some favours he’d scrounged up over the years. Things he never thought to cash in, because what for? He didn’t mind covering the odd shift or hiding the odd miscalculation that a higher-up missed. Sure, there was the time when Admiral Dumbledore came to him to fly someone out of the Sol system under the radar. Sure, Moody once did ask him for help derailing legislation through less than stellar means.

As it turned out, he’s had quite a few people he could press on, lean on, to make it happen. Nobody understood why he cared so much. He didn’t understand either.

But he was given a ship, and indefinite time off work (a sabbatical, they called it - like pilots ever had those). He went alone because that was the deal. Nobody is to know. This is a waste of resources and of taxpayer money.

Two weeks, it takes him to reach the exoplanet.

(Nothing, in comparison to twelve years.)

He doesn’t mind the solitude. Just him and his little ship, and all the stars in the sky. It’s a newer model, easier for a crew of one to manage than the older ones. The computer working the systems keeps getting smarter. Soon, Remus thinks, his job will be obsolete.

Proxima Centauri b is pretty from orbit. Vast oceans, swaths of green, sun-bathed clouds hiding it from view in the most picturesque way. Remus watches as the line of day-night moves across the surface of the planet, so, so slowly. He’s stalling - he’s here and now he’s stalling, because this is it. What if it was for nothing? What if the voice had been extinguished in all the years that passed?

He’s not to land unless he makes contact: a waste of fuel on an already wasteful journey. It’s a clear command and already he knows he’s going to break it, because he’s not come this far just to be waylaid by the colony’s malfunctioning communicator, or the owner of the voice not seeing his message. Because, if he’s there, why would he check it? After all those years? 

Still: there is flagrant disregard of orders, and there is covering one’s tracks, so Remus sends out the message.

Survivors of the Proxima Centauri b colony, come in. 

The little black text on the little green screen flickers with its own electrical life. 

No response comes and Remus tells himself you knew this would happen, it doesn’t mean anything. He sends the message again, and then again after a couple of hours. He has enough fuel to stay in orbit for a week and still get back to Earth with a safe amount spare.

He’s planned it like this: three messages, equal times apart, to show he tried it that way first. Then, short circuit the communicator - notoriously unreliable on the class of ship he’d been provided. Nobody can blame him for not trying. Nobody can blame him for finishing the mission in person.

What else was he to do, turn back?

He lands as near to the colony as the landscape allows. The compound is vast but the atmosphere is breathable. Remus has gotten used to the staleness of the recycled air he’s been in for a fortnight and this freshness is so welcome it makes him a little bit dizzy.

From the first look, it’s clear that the colony was abandoned - that something had happened. Remus’ footsteps echo against the white walls of the compound in an eerie quiet. He’s been to these places, these colonies, more times than he can count, but never once had he seen it empty.

It’s only the steady humming of power, running through the cables built into the floor, that gives him hope.

He comes across a doorway to an Aeroponics bay and this - this can’t be something that had cultivated itself. There must be someone here.

The plants have grown tall, their exposed roots well maintained - the air is moist, warm and hazy and Remus doesn’t think he sees an automatic water deployment system. Somebody must have just sprayed them. He touches the leaves of potato plants, gathering the moisture with his fingers because it’s a dual thing of life here - a sign and a gift.

There’s corn, and what he thinks is spinach, and strawberries. He shouldn’t be surprised - this was a large scale colony, with families and children. Of course they’d have things just for pleasure, even if it’s not the best use of the space.

The first time Remus sees him, it’s just a glimpse of a person walking through greenery. An afterimage of dark hair, of leisurely steps, of a strong, straight posture.

And then the man takes a few steps into the main aisle and turns around, and there he is.

It’s clear he’s been living by himself for too long. His hair hangs past his shoulders, unkempt but clean, a mess of black waves. There is a thinness to his frame, a suggestion of jutting elbows and sharp hipbones, clothes hanging on him like they were used to a larger body. Facial hair accentuating the edges of his cheeks, the set of his eyes.

Even like this, clearly malnourished, clearly not caring for his appearance, he’s beautiful.

They stand apart - two meters, maybe three. Remus still in his flight suit, the man in something soft and worn and comfortable. There’s the buzzing of electricity and the humming of the air purification unit and no other sounds, none at all.

Remus knows it’s him. He knows his silence as others would know his voice

And then: “You came,” and the voice, too, is familiar.

“I did.”

The man takes step after halted step, like walking on unfamiliar ground. He comes closer but not close. Remus understands.

“How long has it been?”

“Twelve years.”

An interface on one of the plant unit beeps and the man turns to it. “Huh,” he huffs out, a small sound almost like no sound at all.

He fiddles with the positioning of roots and presses buttons that make the beeping stop, then picks up an atomiser and sprays a fine mist over the plant. He has lovely hands, even if the fingers look a bit bony and the nails have been bitten down.

“What’s your name?” Remus asks because he’s wanted to know since the first time he heard the recording.

“Sirius,” the man speaks to the plant.

And Remus is a pilot. He knows the stars. He’s flown amongst them, used them as guides. He knows which one is the brightest in the winter sky and how to orient by it.

“Suits you.”

Sirius turns to him again, surprise written clear across his face. “You’re still here,” he says, then pauses. It’s the same pause Remus knows. “You didn’t go away.”

“No, I didn’t. I won’t.”

“No?”

“Not without you.”

More plants get sprayed, more roots adjusted. Sirius checks things on the interface displays along the aisle he stands in.

There is no need for him to maintain them anymore. Back on the ship Remus has enough food to last them both a month. He won’t tell Sirius that - he watches him care for the plants as if by muscle memory. They must be what kept him fed all the years he’s been alone.

He doesn’t move. Everything in the Aeroponics bay feels fragile and breakable, the air soft with mistwater, the silence held up by humming electricity. “Will you come with me?”

“Not today,” he walks out of the Aeroponics bay, doesn’t look back.

***

Proxima Centauri b is situated in a binary star system. The days are almost never ending, and the nights, when they happen, are so black that navigation becomes impossible.

The dual suns are larger than Remus has ever seen from any planet surface, the size of the Earth’s moon when it hangs full low over the horizon. They’re both red Dwarfs, giving out little heat. The sky is painted a dark maroon and the shadows are strange, multi-positioned. Everything looks one-dimensional. Flat, like a photograph. Rendered in tones of reds and greys, and deep, rich blacks.

Walking into the compound is like waking from a surrealist dream.

Sirius is in the Aeroponics bay again, tending to his plants. He doesn’t startle when he sees Remus.

“You came back,” he says after a long stretch of silence. He maintains eye contact this time, waits for the answer. 

“I said I wouldn’t leave.”

“There is a difference between not leaving and coming back.”

Remus wonders where the bodies of everyone who didn’t leave but didn’t come back are. Every other member of the colony of dozens. Did Sirius bury them, dug up the cold, hard ground? Is there a cemetery outside in the infertile red soil? Was it slow, gradual? Or did the colony collapse all at once, suddenly and quickly, until Sirius was all that was left?

“Come,” Sirius says, but doesn’t look if Remus follows.

There is a Mess Hall across from the corridor, with a small kitchen attached. Sirius gestures for Remus to sit. He does, choosing a chair closest to the kitchen and wonders if this is where Sirius would normally sit, or if he rotates his spot, or if Remus is the first to sit there in twelve years.

Sirius placed two bowls on the table, cream-of-potato soup and cornbread. “Eat,” he says, dipping the bread into the soup in lieu of a spoon.

“Thank you.”

Sirius drops the bread and looks at Remus and it’s clear that before he wasn’t, not really. Not at Remus, but through him, like he was an apparition or a hallucination or maybe not there at all. A trick of the light or a figure of mist.

The scrutiny verges on uncomfortable. Remus tries eating, tries to look natural - it would be so easy to spook Sirius here, one wrong move is one too many. Remus can’t afford to make a mistake, not when the eyes looking at him (into him) are so bright with life that simply wasn’t there before. He didn’t notice that Sirius was as flat as the horizon until he sparked up.

“This is very nice,” he says about the food.

And Sirius barks.

It’s a laugh, Remus supposes. An approximation of one. Sirius silences it and touches the hollow of his throat with unsure fingers. Remus wonders how long it’s been since he laughed.

“It tastes like shit,” he says. It’s the most animated he’s sounded since Remus found him. His fingers don’t move from over his trachea, as if he’s feeling the vibrations his voice creates there. “I ran out of salt years ago.” 

Everything they’re eating was grown by Sirius’ hands, then made into food by him too, and that annuls any complaints Remus could have had about the taste. He’s seen how SIrius is with his plants, delicate and caring, like they’re more than just something which provides him with nutrients. 

Did you speak to them? Remus wonders. Did they keep you company, the only other breathing things left here?

Once the food is gone, Sirius meanders away. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Remus says to his retreating back. Whether Sirius heard it or not is unclear - his steps don’t falter, he doesn’t turn back.

Not today.

***

There is an artificial day-night cycle on Remus’ little ship. Lights simulate the natural progression of the Earth’s sun to keep his circadian rhythm from deteriorating while he’s off planet.

(He dreams of silence.)

In the morning, Sirius is outside of the compound. The angles and edges of his face look softened in the strange reddish shadows. He doesn’t say you came back, doesn’t say anything. The way he watches Remus is unlike he’s ever been watched before: shrewd intent, no hesitation. Each step he takes towards him is like that, too.

Remus doesn’t move. Waits for Sirius to reach him. (He thinks he’ll always wait for Sirius to reach him.)

“Who are you?” Sirius finally asks as they’re face-to-face, less than an arms’ length apart, close enough to touch.

“Lieutenant Remus Lupin,” he answers in the simplest way he knows how. They both know that’s not what the question meant.

“Why are you here?”

“You know why,” Remus tells him. It’s not you sent a call for help and it’s not it was my duty. 

Surely, Sirius feels it too - maybe felt it before Remus got here; when the message made it to Earth or when Remus was played it for the first time, or when he downloaded it onto his personal drive and snuck it out of the lab. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. Surely, Sirius too must have dreamt of this moment when the silence gets filled with words, and the next one when it will be filled with sound. Just the two of them, where before Sirius was alone, reminding the air what it feels like to resonate.

Sirius takes the last step forward and brings his hand up, fingers trembling as, haltingly, he places it over Remus’ heart.

“We don’t have to,” Remus tells him, “we can wait.”

“I did my waiting.”

Sirius moves his hand up, along the zip of the flight suit, until he reaches Remus’ throat: a mirror of how he touched his own, fingertips light against the skin.

Remus speaks just so Sirius can feel his voice as it’s created. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

Sirius is conservative with his words, with the humming sounds he chooses to respond with. Everything from him is a bit rough - a voice unused in too long a time. Some words he overpronounces. Forgotten how they feel on his tongue, Remus guesses.

The hand on his throat stretches out, fingers splayed until they span the width of it, then slip around and into his hair. Sirius watches as if he isn’t the one doing it. As if it’s something that just happened, that was always going to happen. Inevitable. Written into the atoms that make up the both of them, aeons ago when they were still stardust caught in nebulae, strewn across the cosmos. Cyclically, with each universe beginning and each one ending, coming back to this moment - to this first touch.

Delicately, because Sirius should always be touched delicately, Remus takes hold of his wrist. Sirius’ breath hitches, then stops. It's divinity to touch him. 

Remus makes it gentle. Makes it safe. If he’s the first in twelve years to place marks of fingerprints on Sirius’ body, then he’ll make himself into something worth it.

It’s a wonder how seamless everything is. As if it isn’t new. Remus knows Sirius is going to kiss him before he does. There is no change in his demeanour but there is a shift in the silence, something else stirred through the determination. 

And then Sirius does. And Remus finds his home on Proxima Centauri.

It’s odd, that he didn’t realise a part of him was missing until he found it, but it’s so clear now, with Sirius’ lips against his own. There was a hole inside of him and now, with each second he is allowed this, each second he’s given this, that hole is filled.

Sirius is slow about it. Patient. If nothing else he must have learnt patience, surviving like this. Remus keeps it like this: soft touches as their lips come apart and come together. Warm, where Sirius is warm, the only source of heat on the surface of this cold planet, the only source of life.

Sirius leads him toward the compound and it’s like stepping into the ocean - the water welcoming its long-forgotten counterpart.

They walk through the corridor, past the Mess, past the Aeroponics Bay. There are more spaces there - Engineering and Storage and rooms Remus pays no mind, too engrossed in the way Sirius has weaved their fingers together to pull him along.

The bedroom they enter is sparse. Utilitarian. Somewhere Sirius shouldn’t belong in and yet, through circumstance, does. Remus thinks of his home back on Earth. Comfortable bed strewn with blankets, an old wood fireplace he’s had converted into plasma. Thinks of Sirius in his kitchen or on his little balcony or in his bed.

Then Sirius reaches for the zip of his flight suit, and Remus thinks of nothing at all.

“Don’t touch me softly,” Sirius asks when Remus runs careful fingers up his arms. “Touch me like you’re here.”

So he does: tightens his hold, puts his hand into Sirius’ hair, down the sharp bones of his face, across the harshness of his beard. Sirius’ eyes flutter open and shut, once, twice - on the third they’re red-rimmed and wet.

“I’m here.”

They kiss again and it’s harder this time. Purposeful. Remus walks them forward until the backs of Sirius’ knees hit the bed and he collapses onto it, still held as he wants to be held.

There are tattoos down Sirius’ sternum. Remus discovers them with his mouth as he pushes the soft shirt up and off and out of the way.

This is the first one: a soft, quiet whimper, laced with the tears that finally spill. It sounds both like pleasure and like pain. Remus coaxes more of them out of Sirius’ throat as he mouths across it. Feels the trembling under his skin as his body remembers how to make these sounds. Feels the skin heat as it remembers why. 

“I found you,” he says into Sirius’ ribs. “I knew you’d be here.”

Sirius doesn’t reciprocate. He lays stretched out on the bed; hands twisted into the pillow, one a fist he bites into. “Don’t hide,” Remus tells him, “let me hear you.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s alright. We'll find it.”

He licks down Sirius’ hipbone and the sound comes again. Louder, needier. More like a moan. He does it again, and again. Encore. One more time. For me, once more. Then: harder and Remus obliges, bites to bruise.

There is no teasing. There are hands in hair, pulling, and mouths tasting and then please Sirius says - please, the word that brought them together. 

Remus doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to resist giving in when Sirius asks like that. He pulls one of Sirius’ legs up, wraps it around himself to spread him open. Licks his own fingers until they’re soaked. Kisses Sirius through the first touches, apologetic. Forgive me for the pain. Sirius grabs at his shoulders, nails digging into the skin. He’s so impossibly tight, so wonderfully warm, and Remus knows when it turns from hurt and discomfort into something better. Sirius’ face doesn’t relax, but contorts into pleasure.

“I’ve forgotten,” he says in halted breaths.

Remus fucks him with two fingers, slow but hard. Kisses each moan straight from his mouth. Sirius clings onto him through it. “Please, Remus, more,” he uses the name for the first time. 

(Better than silence, the sound of the name ripped out of him mid-moan.)

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Remus doubles his efforts to make just his fingers good enough. They have nothing to help with the stretch.

“It won’t hurt,” Sirius uses the leg thrown over Remus’ hip to bring him closer. “Let me feel you. Let me have you.”

“You have me,” Remus tells him and means it in so many ways, “whatever happens here now, you have me.”

Something softens in Sirius’ expression. He pulls Remus in, fingers splayed across his jaw. Kisses him so slowly. The contrast - fingers hard where they bring Sirius pleasure but his lips soft and yielding and pliant - the contrast is almost enough to send Remus towards his own edge.

He’s not prepared when Sirius surges up and reverses them. Pushes Remus to the bed and straddles him. Rids them both of what clothes they have left on. Then, hand on Remus’ cock, his face turns mischievous and that? That is the look that suits him better than any other. “You’re so hard for me already,” he purrs. “I want to feel you everywhere, inside of me and outside.”

And who is Remus to deny him? No one. He’s no one, but a vessel for the things he feels for the man above him. Before he was empty and now, here, he’s overflowing.

I think I love you, he wants to say as Sirius lathers him up in spit. I think the stars have sent me you. 

The moment you laid eyes on me was the moment my existence began.

Sirius is careful about it, but inch by torturous inch he lowers himself down Remus’ cock. He’s warmer than the double suns keeping the planet alive. Remus could stay like this, surrounded by him, until the permaday ends.

And then Sirius sits. Arse flush to Remus’ hips. Throws his head back in pleasure, mouth agape and eyes closed as he feels it out.

“That’s it,” Remus tells him, voice tight and hands splayed on Sirius’ hips, grounding them both. “Take your time.”

Sirius, a contrarian, starts to move almost immediately. Minute rocks back and forth. Remus feels it as static electricity in his veins. He brings Sirius down, until he lays down on Remus and their lips can meet again, and Remus can bend his knees and drive himself further into Sirius, use the grip on his hips to bring him down closer on each thrust.

It’s maddening. Unlike anything. That he found it here could be proof of a higher power, had Remus not flown across the known galaxy. He always knew there was no space for such things in the sky. (He didn’t realise they were hiding here.)

Their movements grow erratic. The tears in Sirius’ eyes return and Remus wipes them off with his thumb. This gesture he allows himself to be soft, and Sirius turns his face into the palm of Remus’ hand, welcoming it.

“I’m so close,” Sirius says. The way he clenches over Remus a giveaway. Maybe a reward, but Remus doesn’t think he’s done anything in this life worthy of such a thing. 

Remus takes Sirius’ cock in hand, keeps his thrusts deep and steady. “That’s it,” he says, “come for me.”

Sirius moans into Remus’ mouth, loud and unashamed and this, this right there, is what makes Remus cum.

There is an eternity contained in the time they cling to one another. Remus runs his fingers up and down the lovely curve of Sirius’ back. All the ways left to discover you, he thinks, tracing vertebrae. All the time we’ll have, now we found each other.

***

In the two weeks they take to get back to Earth, silence becomes a thing of the past. Remus reminds Sirius what it’s like to be touched, and in return Sirius rewrites each sensation for him like it’s brand new. 

“Stay with me,” Remus asks before they land, and: