In the Moment

Remus waits with the curtains closed. He has learned how to silence just the frame of the bed, so no sound can escape, but he can hear the rest of the room. So he waits in the stuffy warmth of his curtained-off bed, naked but for one sheet, listening for Sirius’ quiet snores and Peter’s hissing breaths.

He waits a full twenty minutes after both of them are asleep, and that’s when he hears the mattress springs next to him squeak, hears the soft, stealthy press of bare feet against plush carpet. Then the left curtain is pushed aside just enough to let in the brief blue-silver glow of moonlight and a silhouette of mussed hair and round face and bare shoulders.

When the curtain closes again, they drown in the darkness, but he feels James’ weight next to him, feels a fumbling hand touch his face, seeking him out in the pitch black. He can feel the warmth of James’ body, hear his quiet breaths, even if he cannot see him. It is the same nearly every night; they wait until the rest of the room is asleep, and then James comes to him, touches his face and breathes his name in the dark.

James leans over him, and their lips meet as if James can sense their exact location. They kiss, soft and warm and careful, until finally, Remus grazes teeth over the soft, wet inside of James’ bottom lip.

Then there is nothing soft or warm or careful about what they do, because then it is hard and hot and reckless; Remus won’t let James treat him like a girl, won’t let him imagine that what they do is merely a substitute for what James can’t have.

James slides under the sheet, pressing his hard, cloth-covered cock against Remus’ hip. Remus tangles a hand in James’ hair, bitten nails scraping against his scalp carelessly, and he tugs. James’ mouth tears from his, his head tilts back, throat exposed. James’ hands are reaching now, feeling the tight, hard planes of Remus’ chest, the shallow dip in his sternum, the jarring protrusions of his ribs and the clenching muscles of his abdomen.

Remus bites at James’ exposed, corded neck, feels the pulse beneath his lower lip, and the wolf inside him thinks just one good snap of his jaw, and he’d have him. But Remus ignores that, slides his tongue over James’ Adam’s apple, down into the dip at the base and over, across a collarbone. His other hand pushes the waistband of James’ pajamas down, feels that naked cock slide smoothly over his skin now, and James grips Remus’ prick in one tight fist.

James ruts against his sharp hipbone and pulls in smooth slides and rough twists of his wrist. Remus bucks against him and bites at his throat, scratches and pulls at his hair. This is how they work, how they do it every time, and if they know it won’t last forever, if they know it isn’t enough to last that long, it is at least enough in the moment.