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The Moon's Significant Tremble



because it seems the sort of thing one ought to do, like sending Christmas cards and giving a few pounds to the heroin addict sleeping in the bus stop. It doesn’t matter that there’s nothing in Wales, just like it doesn’t matter that the Christmas cards will doubtlessly rest on the mantle for a few days before they’re thrown away, like no one bothers to care that the money will only go for more drugs, not a hot cup of coffee and a sandwich.





Lupin talks with his hands - slow, expressive motions that captivate and hold tight. They’re strong, Sirius thinks, absently, as Lupin talks of India: a cupped gesture to indicate the Ganges, the indelicate curl of his fingers to show the slow slide of a mango down one’s throat. The hands of someone unafraid to work.





“I wish,” he murmurs, too lost to follow the conversation, feeling the stray-electron hit of neurons firing, nothing to do with this, “I knew what India tasted like.”



There’s a long, startled half-blink from Lupin, as if Sirius has caught all of him off guard with the question, instead of just his mind and mouth.



“Like curry,” he says, finally, after a long pause, with a warm, quiet smile that Sirius feels complete the circuit. “Like curry, and like rain.”

“Kipling. No one much reads Kipling anymore.”



Sirius somehow doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t particularly like it – too dark in the heart of things, too tense, as if the pages are too thin for all they hold. “I’ve only started,” he says, instead – not a lie, if three-quarters through is beginning.

He could have someone warm in his bed tonight, and she’s pretty, with dark eyes and small breasts that he can catch the edges of through her uniform, too cold in here for the short sleeves she wears. Let me give you my coat, he could say, you look cold, and then she might sit beside him, later, and in the slow, smudged blinks between now and four in the morning he might not be so alone. He can imagine, in half a second, what her breasts could feel like cupped in his hands, how her pulse might beat beneath his mouth, sweet and rapid in the hollow of her throat, how she might feel around him, warm and slow and oh god there.



He doesn’t want it.

“Hello?” the voice comes through, recognizable even through static, and Sirius thinks, for a moment, that he ought to have planned out what to say, because he’s close to saying everything he’s ever needed to say to a stranger he’s met once, on a train, in the middle of the night. I’m lonely, he nearly says. I’m afraid of staying like this for the rest of my life. He wonders if he’s turning into his mother, hearing voices in his head.



“It’s Sirius,” he says, finally. “Sirius Black, from the train.”



Lupin stands still, eyes half-closed, gilded in light and the dust moats of a thousand footsteps, steady with obvious reverence for this something. Sirius has always simply walked by, hardly even noticing the hulking statue, in a hurry to get to things more glamorous; the gallery of jewels, the human remains. Here, though, he can see the slow curve of age set in stone, the butterfly-wing fragility of this. He understands, for half a moment, what it is to be here, in this moment, and he finds it strange that he feels alive for the first time in months standing in the hall of a museum he’s never really enjoyed, watching a stranger enjoy a skeleton.



It’s like falling, slow and unsteady, with water and out held hands to break your fall. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when you hit, he thinks, the only time the analogy occurs to him, but wariness is not enough to prevent trust.



he’s acutely aware that Remus is watching him, with the same scrutiny he applies to things he thinks are beautiful – dinosaur skeletons and small flowers and an exceptionally well-written paper

It’s surprising, Sirius thinks, how little things change between them. Every other friendship turned romance has been full of awkward pauses and uncertain boundaries, whether to tell your colleagues you’ve gotten together, whether to stay friends after, but this is easy. , Sirius stops thinking of twenty-six as just-this-close-to-thirty.

Being with Remus Lupin is easy, for three weeks and four days, and then Remus takes off his jumper, after their sixth official date, and undoes his cuffs, and murmurs



“I was going to take your watch,” the voice comes, almost asleep, against his chest.



“What?” Sirius says, finally.



“The night we met,” Remus murmurs, “I was going to take your watch. They’d

“I think,” Sirius whispers, the first time he’s told anyone, “I was going insane, before you

And yes, Sirius thinks, the burning answer to the unanswered question – yes, Remus Lupin tastes of India.