Marauder crack

Boiling point: 212 F

Sirius dreams. Stumbling from nightmare to nightmare. Scattered images, sharp sensations. He hangs his head from his mother's arm, falls endlessly down into a bottomless pipe for years and years without anyone hearing him scream, while he's getting old. He's been mugged in Knocturn alley and a faceless figure digs sharp nails into his chest and rips out his heart as Sirius hears the slimy noise of his own insides. In dreams, his blood thickens, and hundreds of small silkworms slowly eat his eye sockets while he hums old Black lullabies.

Everyone - even James - believes that he is an insomniac by will and Sirius proclaims to the four winds that if he sleeps a lot he loses everything interesting. He cries that he wants to be awake, that he refuses to sleep, that just losers and the dead rest. He doesn't talk about the nightmares. Never. With anyone.

He wakes up at five in the morning sweating, and everything is unstable, the bed drifts, the stained glass windows confuse him with his pale and haggard sight. His breath is galloping uncontrollably, choking on his guts. He doesn't know where he is until he notices that breath, that voice, that presence in the next bed.

- It was just a dream, Sirius.

Remus.

Peter snores. James takes a deep breath. But Remus is awake. His sleeplessness is a living presence in the boys' bedroom. He can almost touch it, almost tangible. Remus is looking at him.

And now he will ask questions. He now will want to know. And Sirius will have to lie to Remus and it will be like lying to himself, but he will have to because he cannot tell him. What he has seen. What he does. In his dreams. He can't tell anyone. And least of all, he cannot tell Remus.

He will have to lie to him.

He is convinced.

But he doesn't need it.

Because Remus only asks him one thing, that has nothing to do with nightmares.

- A fag?

He has tobacco on the table and offers him a lit cigarette. Sirius, that he still experiences the panic of being on the edge of his night terrors, nods slightly, because he doesn't understand how it is possible that Remus always knows what to say. And he wants to offer comfort leaving enough space for him not to have to lie.

It is as if they have a conversation without words.

"You know that I will lie to you".

"I know".

"I do not want to".

"Then don't".

Remus hardly ever smokes. But when he does, it is an exquisite sight. He gets the smoke to dance around him and make him float. Sirius gets on his bed. The impulse is to get inside him, but Sirius contains himself. After one long nightmare, he feels naked and raw. He cannot tell if is so close to him. He suspects that he could tell him everything. Or worse, start crying. The last time he cried he must have been six years old. If he starts now, with those images still fresh in his mind, he's never going to stop. Better to sit at Remus's feet, shirtless, in pijama bottoms and share a cigarette.

He lights it up for Remus, watching the first puff of it by him, the movement of his Adan's apple when he swallows, the way their lips meet on the smoking paper, and forming the shore of some unexplored sea. They smoke at times, and when they pass the cigarette, their fingers touch. 

Remus sleeps with a short sleeve t-shirt, like the good guys. But he smokes and creates an exquisite contrast. His presence inspires Sirius for violence and flesh. For calm and crying.

- What are you doing up at five in the morning, Lupin?

Remus is Little Red Riding Hood. And when he expels the cigarette smoke he is the Fierce wolf.

- Full moon tomorrow. It wouldn't let me sleep.

Sirius has a dog inside him. And in moments like this, when the cigarette butt illuminates remnants of fresh scars on Remus's cheeks, marks of wounds that he has inflicted on himself, he would really like to be His dog. Passive and willing and at his feet. But then he remembers the nightmares and he sees himself in them, the canine figure of him eating and clawing and opening and devouring the flesh of someone he can't see until the last moment until he makes out the scars and the light brown hair and the long pianist hands.

In dreams, Sirius eats Remus. Sometimes James. Or Peter. Sometimes he eats himself. His own corpse dislodged between his fangs.

He can't tell Remus that. Not that. But he could be another kind of dog.

Licking Remus's scars, laying down near his feet, do whatever he asked.

Anything he asked of him because maybe that way Sirius would be better than he is.

- Sometimes I look at you while you sleep.

They consume the cigarette. They can't stop looking at each other.

- And what do you see.

Remus speaks as slowly as he smokes. He scrolls the words while enjoying the poison of nicotine.

- The guy who ate thirty-five muffins in third grade.

Like that. With just one sentence, Remus manages to get a smile out of him and burns his discomfort like cigarette paper. He feels inflames with a violent desire to mess with him in bed. But they don't want to wake anyone up, so they kiss on the edge of the sheets, in the dark, containing grunts and deep sighs.

- If we do it in silence - whispers Sirius- they wouldn't hear us.

Remus presses against him, more than hot, feverish, agitated.

- I don't want to do it in silence, Sirius, I don't want to.

And it is at that moment, when Remus Lupin goes insolvent and loses control when Sirius has a very clear picture of what he wants to do with him. The same as in his dreams. He wants to eat him, devour him, scratch him, lay him face down, take off his clothes and fuck him. God damn it.

Yes. While Remus bites his lip and sucks his tongue, Sirius Black melts with the desire to fuck him.

He literally melts.

- I swear it wasn't me, Professor!!!!

Peter separates them automatically. It makes James jump in the bed and sit up. The cigarette falls to the ground and Remus has to cast a spell so that the bed and the carpet don't catch on fire. During a moment, while Peter recovers everything is a hassle. Afterward, the room is silent again. Sirius has a hard time trying, but he gets to sleep a couple more hours. He dreams of Remus and his meat open for him. They devour each other. They fuck until madness. And when he awakens, he burns, his whole body vibrates. He is stiff, faint with desire.

And there is only one thing that can comfort him...