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I do not like my state of mind;
I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
When he finally snapped, Remus Lupin did three things. He broke off the engagement (what engagement, he'd ended up yelling, show me a ring, a proposal, a kiss) with Tonks, he sent a paint-blistering Howler to Molly Weasley, and he packed his bags for a trip to Osaka.
The fourth thing he did was send an express-owl to Arthur asking him to intercept the Howler (Remus still possessed a modicum of self-preservation). When he returned it would be to find that Arthur hadn't made it home in time, and there would be screaming and hexes and castigation, and words like "thoughtless," "meddling," and "ingrate" would be used. But by then Remus would be beyond caring.
Osaka was, even for Wizards, very far away, accessible by a succession of increasingly horrible Floo connections (some no better than open pits for roasting shanks of yak). There were lines even Remus drew, and manifesting in a fire pit full of yak shanks was one of them. He had lately taken up work for Dung "No Questions Asked" Fletcher and had quite a deal of money for the first time in his life, as well as some rather shiny new cauldrons. He made one quick stop at Gringrott's and found himself two hours later queuing in Heathrow amongst flocks of vigorous Germans, his forged French passport and new ticket in hand, marvelling that it could be this easy.
It seemed somehow wrong that the cheapest flight visited the most exotic locales, but as the aeroplane with the wonky air conditioning circled down to land at the cement-bunker airport that they had left just forty minutes previously, the romance of the air wore off irrevocably. The air hostesses, their foundation liquefying, walked around with buckets of wet flannels. Remus pressed his over his eyes and tried to sleep as the child behind him kicked his seat rhythmically in time with the music on its GameBoy.
: : : : : : :
I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
"Took your time getting here," Severus snapped as Remus stumbled out of International Arrivals. "No international Apparition license, I suppose? Figures. I hate fucking around with Muggle transportation."
"Lovely to see you too," Remus muttered at Severus' rapidly moving back. He adjusted the straps on his rucksack and shifted the suitcase, whose handles dug painfully into his palm. Severus disappeared up an escalator, and Remus hurried to keep up. He nearly lost Severus on the pedestrian bridge to the train terminal when two converging groups of elderly Chinese tourists surged past and sent him reeling into a rack of vending machines. Remus had no idea where Severus was going and trains were involved: he forced his numb legs to run.
"Got you," Remus said, wrapping one hand tightly in the folds of Severus' coat (a truly gorgeous coat, sweeping nearly to the ankles but slit up the back nearly to the arse: it felt expensive). The look Severus gave Remus would have frozen peas at fifty paces. "Are we buying tickets?"
Severus deigned to answer, but fed fistfuls of silver coins, with and without holes, into the slot on the machine. Remus looked on bemused as Severus scooped up the money that was returned along with their tickets.
"Thank you," he said. "Firm grasp on the local currency, eh?"
"Don't leave it in the wicket, idiot," Severus said, reaching back to yank Remus' ticket out of the little slot where it had popped up. "You can stop manhandling me now. Platform four. You sit there -- no, not next to me. Damn it, Lupin."
"Before you kick that bag you should know that it's got your supply of Nutella in," Remus said sleepily. "Weighs a bloody tonne. Muggles are mad to travel like this." He pulled the collar of his worn cotton jacket up and buttoned it up to his chin. "What day is it?"
"The sixteenth. Tuesday." Severus pushed the offending bag to one side and stretched his legs out. "What the hell are you doing in Osaka, anyway?"
"Canada," Remus said, leaning his head on the window and shutting his eyes. "Where I'm supposed to be going."
Severus stared out as the train accelerated across the bridge, watching the grey towers of Osaka loom out of the grey smog beyond the stretch of grey ocean. Twilight: the feeble grey sun was outshone by neon. Not a moose in sight. "Lousy sense of direction, Lupin."
Remus sighed and crossed his arms. He said something under his breath that might have been "homing instinct".
: : : : : : :
"I hadn't figured you'd be living in such a -- " Remus paused, as if looking for a comprehensive word that wasn't offensive, and failing. The rooms, lit by fluttery fluorescent bulbs, were more of an office than a flat. There was a small kitchenette by the door and a rack to put shoes, but those were the only concessions to habitation. The walls were lined with bookshelves and racks of parchment; the desk was scarred and littered with files and odd things floating in yellowish liquid. The one grimy window looked out over illuminated billboards and warehouses and train tracks and, far beyond, the docks, red lights flashing on the derricks. A short corridor led off to the left, ending in a glass door leading to a balcony where dead plants sat reproachfully on a rusting Muggle ironing board.
"Hellhole?" Severus offered. "It's right off Sono Toori -- Osaka's Diagon Alley -- and the owners aren't particular about... anything, really. The building is integrated -- Muggle and wizarding mixed -- and it all works due to the liberal policies of organized crime, I think. I was," Severus said with a mocking smile, "impressed that the bathhouse downstairs accepts both foreigners and tattoos."
"That's the second time you've mentioned the baths," Remus said. "Are you being subtle?"
"No," Severus said. "You smell like you've been wearing the same clothes for a week, and your hair's disgusting."
"You're one to talk," Remus muttered, but grabbed his bag and began rummaging out toiletries and odd bits of clothing. "Are these public baths? Men and women all soaping up together, naked?"
"Public, yes, but segregated. Do try not to ogle the clientele, Lupin. They might take offence, and that would reflect badly on me."
"You did say that it wasn't a brothel, didn't you?"
"Not entirely," Severus said. "You'll need to bring your own flannel and towel. They sell shampoo and soap at the front desk. Have fun." He held out a fistful of change; Remus took it dubiously.
"Aren't you coming?"
Severus flicked his wand and the hallway door banged open. "I have work to do."
: : : : : : :
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I’d be arrested.
"So. What have you got for me?" Severus asked, tossing Remus a beer. Damned if he'd waste the good wine on the man. Remus' damp hair stuck up as if he'd simply towelled it and got dressed without once referencing a mirror. Scruffy. Cheap. Severus dug out a half-finished bag of crisps -- no better than the man deserved -- from the cupboard and set it on the table. (He'd finished his own meal whilst Remus was bathing: the restaurant down the road had an excellent crow-order menu.)
"Special deliveries." Remus sank cautiously onto the folded-up futon that doubled as a sofa and dragged his suitcase over with his toes. He undid the straps and took out five jars of chocolate spread. "As I recall, you are fond of this stuff."
"My one weakness on this Earth," Severus said blandly, but he flicked his wand and carefully levitated the jars to the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet.
Remus handed over a sheaf of parchment, mostly crushed and tied with parcel twine. "From Minerva," he said around a mouthful of crisps. "Do you want the gossip as well?"
Severus fixed his sharp black gaze on Remus. "I don't want to know a bloody thing. I really -- " he straightened and leant back in his chair, chin raised in contempt -- "do not give a damn."
Remus licked salt off his fingers. "It's funny how things work out, isn't it? I've given up pretty much every dream I ever had--even simple things like legal employment or escaping the werewolf stigma--but somehow I'm still happy. While you," he said, waving at Severus with a crisp, "you have everything you ever wanted. Fortune, fame, friends in high places, exotic travel, respect, gorgeous clothes. And it chafes you, doesn't it? Are you happy?"
"I have infamy, Lupin, in case you hadn't noticed. You do know that I killed Dumbledore? You're not wallowing in denial, are you?"
"Voldemort's made you the gold standard for the Death Eaters. We're all getting rather tired of hearing your praises sung, actually. Maybe you should go back to the Order if you want punishment."
Severus glared at him savagely. "Fuck you, Lupin. I can't be arsed to care whether we're on the same side or not anymore. And you... should not try me."
Remus shrugged and finished his beer. "I'm knackered. I'll be off to bed then, and leave you to things." He stood and stretched, his back cracking audibly.
Severus watched him with narrowed eyes. "There's a spare futon on the library floor. Most of the books are protected by powerful curses, so unless you enjoy having tentacles growing out of your eye sockets -- "
"I'm touched that you thought to warn me," Remus murmured. "The library is through there?"
"The three-mat room opposite the loo," Severus said maliciously. "They do say that the sound of running water is soothing."
Remus picked up his bag. "Good night, then." Severus ignored him pointedly, opening his correspondence, and after a moment he heard the soft sound of footsteps, and then the slide of the door, open, shut.
: : : : : : :
"Get up, lazy bastard."
Remus squinted into the brightness blearily. "Is it morning?"
"Get up, get dressed, we're going out," Severus said.
Remus grabbed his shirt and pulled it on without leaving the futon, and then did the same with his trousers. "You don't believe in heat, I see."
"The bitter cold reminds me of my wasted youth in the dungeons of Hogwarts," Severus said, and the second Remus was out of the futon he snapped his wand out. The quilts folded up obediently and scurried back to the corner of the library. "I can't have you hanging around here all day, so I thought I'd take you sightseeing."
"What's wrong with sitting around talking?" Remus asked, charming his stubble off and combing his fingers through his hair.
Severus raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Here? In the Dark Lord's liaison office? By all means, stay. I'll introduce you to the staff personally. Though I suppose they might have to kill you, afterwards."
"I'd prefer not to be dismembered by your associates, thanks," Remus said, and pulled on two pairs of socks. He followed Severus into the front office. "Breakfast?"
"Here." Severus summoned a large jar of dried squid legs. "Protein."
: : : : : : :
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
"Have you noticed yet that you live in the really tacky part of the city?" Remus asked, looking first at the enormous inflatable blowfish that wafted over the shopping arcade, and then at the strip club that offered couples' seating.
"It's called Shin Sekai," Severus said, turning right at the shop selling octopus balls. "It means new world."
"As in brave?"
"As in this was the vision of the future, fifty years ago. Pathetic, isn't it?" Somehow, stalking through the warren of back roads, they had arrived at the foot of a tower. Severus paid for two tickets from his ubiquitous pocket change, and a man in a suit and white gloves ran them up to the observation deck in his elevator.
"Here, you need to see this," Severus said. He led Remus widdershins around the deck to a statue seated on red velvet. It looked like a Kewpie doll, with enormous feet and an expression that must have been meant to look cherubic, but which instead looked lecherous.
"Good Lord, that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen."
"It's a god," Severus said. "A god thought up by some mad American Muggle a hundred years ago. People worship it. People are fools." He waved his hand over the offering box in front of the statue. The silver shone briefly in his hand before it disappeared into his pocket. "God of things as they ought to be," Severus said. "Ugly and forgotten god of an ugly and forgotten vision of the future."
"'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,'" Remus said lightly, staring down through the dirty windows at a park filled with the blue-tarp tents of the homeless.
"It gives me great comfort and pleasure," Severus said. "Every empire declines, every absolute ruler dies, every brave new world becomes an embarrassment in a matter of years."
"Indeed." Remus eyed the souvenirs dubiously.
"You should take some of these with you for your affiliates."
"Tacky pendant keychains?"
"When you push this little lever, the girl gets fucked up the arse."
"I'm sure the Canadian werewolves would be very impressed, but I shall resist. Isn't it lunchtime?"
"Why, thank you for inviting me, I suppose you have the means to pay?"
Remus grinned and pulled a hand from his pocket, full to bursting with glittering yen: five hundreds, hundreds, fifties. He poured it back in slowly: it jingled like bells. "You always did like the sound of money, I remember that."
"Spare me the intimacies, Lupin."
"How did I forget, that's another of the things we don't talk about."
Severus poked the elevator button savagely. "You're deliberately trying to ruin my appetite and save yourself the expense, aren't you?"
"You have me pegged," Remus said, and held the elevator doors open for Severus. "You always could read me like a book."
"Fuck you, Lupin," Severus said. "Fuck you."
The elevator man's eyes flickered between them uneasily, and in the glass walls Remus' mocking smile reflected ad infinitum. Remus leant close, still smirking, and Severus stiffened as if braced for a blow, or a lewd comment, but Remus merely breathed out "anytime" and then pulled back.
: : : : : : :
The castle was spectacular, rising spectral above the cherry blossoms. Strings of red lanterns waved in the breeze, advertising Suntory beer and outshining the sunset; the ground beneath the trees was carpeted with plastic picnic sheets, men in dark suits, and crates of beer. Someone was singing badly, a song about flowers and rain and possibly eyebrows: Severus' grasp of the language was still shaky. Admittedly, he was rather distracted by Remus, who had taken his arm, somehow, as they strolled along the castle perimeter, and was professing his undying love.
"So -- what do you think?" Remus asked. He had a trick of walking where he lowered his hips and lengthened his stride, enabling him to match Severus' pace effortlessly.
"I think you're having a midlife crisis," Severus said bluntly. "Most men would just buy themselves a Firebolt or marry some physically-fit tart thirteen years younger, but you've always been rather creative."
"Thank you."
Severus narrowed his eyes. "It wasn't a compliment."
"So, you think this is all just some quirk of the brain, brought on by consciousness of my own mortality?"
"And falling sperm levels, yes."
Remus smiled. "Then why you? Because quite frankly I could have had the woman thirteen years younger, but I chose to come here, to someone whose dulcet tones still turn me on even when denigrating my masculinity. You see, I think that's love. I don't think it's a delusion. I think it's the loss of delusions."
"What do you want from me?" Severus asked, wound up like a clock and just as alarmed.
"I don't want anything. Or rather, I don't expect anything. How many years have we been doing this dance of evasion? I just thought -- well, I wanted to tell you."
"You're not being sent off on a lethal mission, are you?"
"No."
"Haven't contracted a fatal disease, or taken a bad hex to the brain?"
"No. Trust me."
"Not some bizarre alpha-werewolf thing?"
Remus snorted. "I didn't dismember Greyback, I arrested him. The pack-leader thing is mostly tedious paperwork with occasional diplomacy. Not unlike the fugitive-Death Eater thing, I would imagine."
"Been practicing Inhibition-Reducing Charms with the damned children?"
"Why can't you just take what I say at face value? Gods. Look -- remember how we used to settle things?"
"Wands at twenty paces."
"Well, that too, but I was thinking more along the lines of a wager. Do you still play darts?"
"Haven't played in years."
"Serpent. If you win, I'll leave tomorrow and I won't try to see you again. If I win, you will look me in the eye and say, 'I believe you when you say that you love me.'"
"No sex?"
Remus shook his head. "No sex."
"You are getting old."
"Trying to get a rise out of me, Severus?"
"There's an Irish pub, fifteen minutes' walk from here."
"Haven't played in years, eh?" Lupin asked, bemused, letting Severus go and stuffing his hands deep into his pockets. "Shall we, then?"
: : : : : : :
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men….
I’m due to fall in love again.
"You should have at least taken the stupid hat, Lupin. It was free."
Remus coughed and was forced to step sideways to maintain balance. "It would be too much of a burden. I couldn't possibly be responsible for a, for a hat, not like this." He swept his hand down, and then brought it back up conclusively. "I have to admit, I hadn't imagined the Japanese would be so very, very Irish."
"Alcohol is the great equaliser," Severus said, and yanked Lupin back from the kerb.
"Is it?" Brown eyes were suddenly far too close to black and focussed with discomfiting acuity. Severus stepped back. He, too, had had one too many for the road.
"Do you want to take a walk through the zoo?" he asked, and was unable to repress a triumphant smirk as Remus' jaw hung for a second in baffled silence. "It's faster."
Remus blinked up at the iron gates. "It's shut -- after hours, and all."
Severus snorted. "Are we not wizards? What are locked doors to us, or rules?"
"The Japanese law has no problems with that?"
"Who do you think I am? I'm the Dark Lord's bloody hatchet man, here on His orders. I could walk you through those gates, push you up against the wall of the reptile house and fuck you senseless, and nothing would happen."
"Sounds a hypothesis worth testing," Remus said, eyeing the gates with a suddenly sober resolve.
Severus snorted. "You're still leaving in the morning."
"That gives me a few hours more, then, doesn't it? You'll need to disable those video cameras, and there's bound to be a guard."
"Guards," Severus dismissed with a sneer, and took out his wand.
: : : : : : :
Severus cast a Muggle-repelling charm on the entrance to the Reptile House after they'd entered, and shoved Remus hard against the glass that kept the lazily watching alligator trapped. The air was hot and heavy: it was almost an effort to breathe, and Remus fought for breath against Severus' mouth, although he didn't try to pull away from the onslaught of sharp teeth and tongue. Severus twisted one hand in the man's ridiculous tangle of hair, forcing Remus' head back as he ran his tongue along Remus' teeth. Remus opened to him without protest: not a surrender, but an invitation.
With his free hand Severus shoved at Remus' coat, yanking it halfway down his arms even as Remus' fingers flew over the buttons. The coat caught at Remus' waist, and Severus yanked his hips forward. The coat hit the stone floor even as Remus' freed hands stroked down Severus' sides to his waist, holding him tight, catching him against the slow, hard roll of those hips.
"Impatient, are you?" Severus asked, pulling back and arching an eyebrow.
"No," Remus said, and made an odd fluttery moan as Severus' teeth caught the side of his neck. His back arched, and the clutch of hands at Severus' waist was desperate. "Please, Severus...."
Severus shrugged his shoulders and felt the slow, heavy slide of his coat. Remus swore and grabbed at it, and then left off his exploration of Severus' stomach to cast about for a place to hang it.
"Drop it," Severus said, but Remus was already crossing the room to fold the coat neatly over a tank of Amazonian poison frogs. Severus growled and flicked his wand out, the spell automatic. "Levicorpus. That ought to keep you in place," he purred, circling Remus, who laughed and let his shirt slither down over his hands to the floor.
"This brings back memories," Remus said, and caught hold of Severus' hair, pulling him into a kiss, tongues sliding freely over each other and the awkward exoticness of teeth and tongue and palates reversed. Remus stretched his arms down, undoing the buttons on Severus' shirt as far as he could reach and sliding his fingers down through Severus' sparse chest hair to his nipples. Severus felt the surprised quirk of Remus' upside-down smile as he found the gold ring; and then he went quite weak, his breath catching, as Remus tugged lightly on the ring, twisting it between the pads of his fingers.
"Let me down," Remus said hoarsely. "More fun that way."
"I could just lower you two feet and put your obnoxious mouth to work."
"Impossible to swallow properly at this angle," Remus said. "Besides, I thought you wanted to -- "
Severus bit Remus' lip to shut him up. "Signa conversum." His expression was definitely smug as Remus rotated slowly right-side-up with a squawk and a flail. "Finite."
Remus dropped the last few inches to the floor and finished removing Severus' shirt, tossing it to the stone floor unhesitatingly. "Never let it be said," he murmured, mouth hot against Severus' chest, "that I am not a quick learner." He caught Severus' nipple between his teeth and rolled the ring lazily with his tongue. His mouth was warmer than the tropical air; his hands as they roamed spread fire across Severus' skin. Severus captured one hand as it attempted to slide down the back of his trousers and bit it firmly.
"No?" Remus said, looking up.
"Show some restraint," Severus growled. Remus straightened, cunning in his eyes, and, before Severus could defend himself, captured both of Severus' wrists. With a simple incarcerous he bound them over Severus' head to a partition demonstrating the mating habits of poisonous snakes. "Literal fucking bastard."
"Just let me know when you feel like, what was it, fucking me senseless against the wall?" Remus loosened his trousers and let them fall into a tangle with his discarded shoes. "Until then I'll keep showing restraint."
Severus opened and then shut his mouth with a click, as if biting back his habitual fuck you. Remus leant forwards and licked Severus' lips slowly, the tip of his tongue hard, and then he slid one rough-callused finger in along the inside of Severus' cheek.
The distraction from Remus' erection rubbing against his stomach kept Severus from being totally captivated by the slow tease of fingers lazily seducing his mouth, and vice versa. Remus resolutely -- or perhaps sadistically -- would not touch him below the waist. Severus was achingly hard, completely unable to control the thrust of his hips against Remus' naked heat.
One finger thrust along his tongue and he sucked automatically. It was entirely unlike an ice lolly: not numbing but awakening every nerve, setting him afire. His sensitised skin registered each drop of sweat, the trails of precome that Remus' cock traced across his stomach. He growled something low, a noise of acute strangling frustration.
"Pardon?" Remus said, leaning forward so that his chest just -- barely -- brushed against Severus'. "Did you say something?"
"Now," Severus bit out, and the instant his hands fell he had them around Remus' waist, spinning him hard around and shoving him against a floor-to-ceiling sheet of plate glass behind which diamondbacks stared out at them with flat, knowing eyes.
He kicked Remus' legs apart and leant against him as he wrenched his trousers open with shaking fingers. Remus' wand had gone spinning across the floor, somewhere in the direction of the iguanas. Remus stood still, defenceless and helpless and so trusting that Severus hissed "fool" at him even as his freed cock pressed hard against the glorious warmth of Remus' arse. Remus' eyes fluttered half-shut and he repressed a groan as he arched back into Severus.
"No need to worry about noise here," Severus said, and cast the lubrication spell before the second thoughts kicked in. Remus gasped and bit his lip as Severus took him, hard and relentless.
Remus' hands scrabbled for purchase on the glass, but his own sweat made his hands slide wildly out. Severus pulled Remus' hips back and pushed until he was balls-deep in blessed heat, fingers digging into Remus' flesh as he jerked reflexively.
"Don't fight me," he snarled, annoyed. "You come willing or not at all."
Remus had settled for resting his forearm along the glass and his head on his arm; he half-turned now, his expression both vastly amused and deadly dangerous.
Just that glance alone, the promise and threat inherent in it, set Severus' blood boiling. He fucked Remus with long, slow thrusts because he knew he wanted more, and was rewarded with bitten off moans and curses and one hand reaching back to clench at his arse.
"Gods, Severus -- ah, fuck, ah, gods -- "
"Like that?" Severus asked, as Remus' head fell backwards to his shoulder, hair trailing damply across his chest.
"Touch me," Remus whispered, breath like flame on Severus' neck.
"Touch you here?" Severus asked, rubbing one nipple erect. "Or here?" He trailed his fingers down to circle Remus' navel. "Or here?" he asked, sheathing Remus' cock with his fingers and pumping him roughly counter to the thrusts of his hips. Remus thrashed, hands on the glass again as he tried to push back, unable anymore to hold back his cries.
"Go ahead, you can scream," Severus said slyly, leaning forward to bite Remus hard on the shoulder. He felt the shock of it resonate in the jump of the cock in his hand as Remus came, with a shout that probably woke the real wolves on the far side of the zoo. The convulsive clenching of Remus' body, hot around him, was blinding, and Severus forced himself in, fucked Remus hard, barely noticing, as his release exploded through his body, the chant of Remus' rough voice urging him on with words of love and always.
: : : : : : :
Remus ran his head under the kitchenette tap, towelled it dry roughly, and then used the wet towel to wash himself with broad, thorough strokes. "There," he said with satisfaction, and hung the towel on a cupboard door, standing naked in the kitchenette to down a glass of water.
"I cheated, you know," Severus said, staring at the shadowy grey bruises he had put all up and down Remus' back, arse, neck.
Remus looked at him, leaning one hip negligently on the countertop. "Of course you did. So did I. You just cheat better than I do." He filled the glass again and drained it. "Having regrets? Second thoughts?"
"Fuck you, Lupin."
Remus shrugged and stretched out one hand, summoning his clothes. He stepped into his trousers, pulled his shirt over his head, and buttoned his coat up tightly. He looked sternly at his suitcase and made a pass of his wand over it. "Pack." Clothing and toiletries flew in, folding themselves in neatly. "That's that, then." He crossed to where Severus stood.
"Who knows where I'll see you again," Remus said, running one hand along the underside of Severus' jaw. "Mogadishu? Vladivostok? Yellowknife? Very exotic, Severus. Just like you always wanted." His eyes flicked to the filthy office and back. "You'll be leaving here soon, I suppose."
"Entirely your fault, for tracing me here in the first place. I would ask whether I'll see you again. Or why I would want to."
"Kiss me," Remus said. After a long, seeking moment, Severus pulled Remus forward into a hard kiss, feral and primal and going straight into his blood like alcohol, and as addictive. He was dying for the roughness of whiskers against his cheek, for that invading tongue, for those jagged canines to drag across his captive lip, for the hot, humid summer heat of breath in his face, and all the familiar scents that were keyed into his backbrain, that made everything he knew and understood dissolve before the seismic rush of need.
Finally, Remus twisted away, wiping a thin trail of blood from a bruised lip.
"Why indeed," he said, with his infuriating smile, and then he slung his rucksack over his shoulder and was gone, shutting the door softly behind him. Severus' hand was on the doorknob but he couldn't bring himself to move. Of all the things he had ever wanted, of every glittering desire that he had mortgaged body and soul for, he could not figure out for the life of him why he couldn't take this, when it was offered free.
:::: the end ::::