Title: Cherished Smiles
Author: kbk
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters are owned by JK Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing and various other people and companies. Not me. I make no money from this.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Remus POV on Sirius, packs and the wolf. Schooldays. Pre-slash. Could be read alone or as a companion to Sweet Torture, the Sirius POV. And there's a resolution to the pair, Gracious Revelation.

I wake up quietly. It may be part of being in control. It may be part of being wolf. Other people turn and stretch and open their eyes before they are aware of their surroundings. I do not. I wake instantaneously. I listen. I smell, on the days my senses are sharp enough. I map out the room as well as I can. Then I loosen my muscles. Only after that do I open my eyes.

Some mornings I wake up to find a curtain on my bed slightly open. It is always the same one. It is always open the same amount. It is the one nearest to Sirius. He is always awake. When I open my eyes, he is always looking away from me. He always glances over at me about fifteen seconds after I finally move. I always smile at him, and he smiles back with the sweetest, happiest smile that I ever see on him. That I've ever seen on anyone. Most of the time his smiles are prompted by humour, and those prompted by simple joy are generally tinged with cynicism. I've never seen him smile that way at anybody else - only me. And I've never seen him smile that way when anybody else is around - only on these mornings.

I cherish these mornings, and I cherish those smiles.

I don't know if he realises how glorious he is. I don't know if anyone really does. They respond to it, all right - the girls especially respond to him, though they seem to think it's more to do with how he looks. Not that he isn't good-looking, but besides that he has a charisma, a light that shines through most easily in his unguarded moments - these mornings, those smiles.

He is handsome. Anyone can see that. His hair is midnight sky on a moonless night, smooth and strokeable. I remember how it feels sliding between my fingers. Padfoot's fur is coarser, but just as dark, and far more available to the hand. His eyes tend to see far too much.

I think he was the one who worked it out first - my non-human status. I don't know, exactly - they confronted me as a group, and it would be strange to ask, but knowing them... Knowing them, Sirius saw it and went to James for confirmation. They told Peter, who fainted, complained and was eventually convinced that if he didn't accept me he would lose the two of them. Peter still avoids me - not much, but enough.

I'm jealous of James, occasionally. He seems to have something of a charmed life. Money-wise, for starters, though I don't really care about that. He's well-loved around the school - Quidditch star, Prefect, all that jazz. He and Sirius are bosom buddies. They make a right pair - both of them tall and handsome, with black hair and wicked grins. They could be fraternal twins. They understand each other.

Of course, James spends a fair whack of time trying to train up Peter, and another wedge of it goes on darling Lily - that's not fair, I really like her, and it's not her fault she's the only permanent girlfriend for the group - but the rest of the time, he and Sirius are... I don't know. A comedy duo, or something. I envy the closeness the two of them have, the way they can each know what the other is thinking. I wish I had someone to understand me like that.

I wish I had Sirius to understand me like that.

Sirius divides his time away from James between me and his stream of girls. I can't help feeling like that makes me his Peter - his project, his helpless one to look after and help out. I don't want to be that. I want to be his friend. Not that Peter isn't James's friend, but... I'm afraid group dynamics aren't my forte. I've learned to think in terms of the wolf pack, and that just doesn't apply to human relationships. Humans are far more complicated, and far more hypocritical.

I don't understand Sirius, though, a lot of the time, so how can I expect him to understand me? How to make him see that between Remus and Moony, there is no distinct dichotomy? That the wolf bleeds through into my daily life, colouring my responses to any given situation? That I evaluate every person I meet on whether they are a potential threat to my status in the pack?

Pack. What do I mean by that? Hogwarts is a community, a large one, almost impossible to know everybody by name. Gryffindor is still large, perhaps a group of packs, a loose association small enough to know all by name but no more. The Marauders are, in size, a classic pack. With respect to the other characteristics - well, we have two alphas, a beta, a female and a runt. Oh, yes. That makes sense. That's a good hunting pack. That doesn't lead to incessant struggles for power between the brother alphas. That doesn't lead to incessant sexual frustration for three of the males.

Sirius sleeps with a few of his girls - the ones that stick around for more than a few days, mostly - but that isn't enough for him. He wants something more permanent, and he doesn't realise that the only way he's going to get that is if he brings another female into the pack. Or if he simply looks at the current members.

I’ve never seen any indications of Sirius being anything other than totally heterosexual - unless I count the looks he gives me on occasion. I discount them as wishful thinking on my part. I wish I could believe I was being too hasty, but when all of his behaviour indicates otherwise...

The hour we spent hiding together last night was, for me, one of the high points of our association. I could feel the heat radiating from his body; I could smell his sharp, salty odour. I admit that I let more than one opportunity for escape go by, just to prolong our proximity. He couldn't wait to get out of there. He seemed to be at ease, some of the time, but then my hand would brush against his leg and he would tense up, try to draw away without drawing attention to himself. It was impossible to avoid contact, so I made an effort only to touch him with the boniest, least sensual, least sensitive parts of my body. My knee, my elbow, my shoulder, my shin... I seem like a lovesick fool, cataloguing each touch shared - especially when I have been pinned full-length against him more than once during the wrestling matches we apparently all must indulge in to preserve our aura of projected testosterone. It truly doesn't help that he enjoys it so damn much.

This was different. This was me, and him, enclosed, dimly lit, so close that we could practically feel each other's breath on our skin, and hear both sets of heartbeats distinctly. The forced immobility drove his naturally hyperactive self to distraction. The forced silence pushed against my need to communicate. It was difficult, it was stressful, and it was arousing. I strung it out as long as I could before giving the all-clear.

We high-tailed it back to the dorm to find James and Peter already back safe and passed out in their beds. Sirius resisted all his temptations, and left them alone in favour of stripping for bed. I resisted mine, and didn't watch.

This morning was one of those mornings, where I wake to feel the air circulating slightly over my face, a slight breeze from where my curtains are open. I always fancy I can feel his eyes on me. This cannot be right. When I open my eyes, he is looking away. Of course, he always knows enough that he looks over after I wake, and I suppose I do increase my usual pre-"waking" restiveness when I know I am on display... I don't understand why he does it. I think it must be some skewed protectiveness, that he feels he cannot effectively watch over me if he cannot physically see me. As if some monster could creep in and take away his friend without anybody noticing, as if he has to make sure that I really am there, that I really am unharmed. When the only monster is the one inside my skin: when the monster is me.

I don't know why he wakes like that, either. So early. It's not like he suffers from nightmares, not like he has any reason to, not like I do, stifling my screams in the pillow because it's not like I don't disturb them enough already... Maybe he just has so much energy that he can't possibly sleep when there's pranks to be planning. Maybe he was simply over-excited at the thought of blowing up yet another cauldron in Snape's face. He was even doing his Potions homework. Didn't get much done, obviously, since he bolted lunch and ran off to the library to try to finish it.

He is smart - our star - but he doesn't put any effort into it. If he would just work a little, he would do so much better. It's partly due to his brains that we are such a success as pranksters and that the three of them became Animagi.

I still find it hard to believe that they would do such a thing for me. What did I ever do to deserve such loyal friends? They could have died attempting the transformation, and yet they did not hesitate - well, except for Peter - in the hope of somewhat relieving my pain.

My pain should never be alleviated. I should not have these friends. I should not be pulling these people into my wretched existence. I should not even be walking these halls. I don't deserve to live, and I know it. I should have died that night under the full moon, died an innocent child in the wolf's jaws. But I am hard to kill. Now it takes silver, or a large dose of aconite. I suppose sufficient blood-loss would also lead to my demise. I should slit my wrists with a silver knife and take a chaser of wolfsbane, just to make sure.

I don't think I'm allowed to talk like that. I think my friends would be angry with me if they could hear my thoughts. But as long as I'm only thinking, and none of them have found a mind-reading spell - I wouldn't put it past them, especially Sirius, since "invasion of privacy" seems to mean nothing to him (I'm not annoyed at him spying on me in my sleep, of course I'm not, why on earth would I be?) and he does know how to research if it works directly in his favour - then they cannot possibly know the subject of my deliberations. Thus they have no reason to be angry.

I make some people angry just by existing.

Bigotry is so unattractive in a person. It totally ruins Lucius, for example. If he had ever found out my little secret... dear God, my life would have been over. I would most certainly have been expelled, and the Malfoy connections would likely have destroyed me. I was glad to see him graduate - though it did remove one of the prettier boys in the years above me.

I'm not too keen on pretty boys, I must admit - probably because I loosely qualify in that category, having "an air of vulnerability" and a fairly delicate frame. I prefer boys to be tall and broad with chiseled features and dark colouring. I want to be able to wrap him around me protectively, and feel that I am the weaker and more easily harmed of the pair. With girls, I would feel the need to be the protector, the bread-winner, the strong one; and I don't want that. I am perfectly capable of it, naturally, and I feel I would be a good father: but I want to relinquish any responsibilities I may have to feel safe in strong arms.

I want to be protected. If there is someone to hold hard enough to my human self, then maybe... maybe I can deny the wolf for a while. I can be protected from the darkness in my gut by an enveloping sweetness and light. I can wrap myself up in human warmth and drive away the coldness of night. I could surround myself with heat, drive into his body and forget that I am... what I am.

I want to be the weak one and yet I want to top. Naturally.

I suppose it comes from the fact that I am the alpha of the animal pack. It helps that I'm the only wolf, but it's not just that. I am in command. In everyday life, I am not the largest and so I take the role of beta, but under the full moon it all changes. Well, Peter's still the runt, but apart from that...

I don't remember much of what happens on those nights - it tends to be merely flashes of memory rather than anything detailed. Sirius tells me stories sometimes, the morning after. Or the next day. Or the day after, if he thinks of it. Actually, whenever he thinks of something that happened that I don't remember, he gets me up-to-date with it. I don't know if he realises just how much I appreciate that: the way his information takes away the hated sensation of having lost control, which comes with ignorance of my own activities.

I like that he talks to me, full stop. If telling me stories about Moony’s romping encourages him to keep talking, to spend more time with me, then I’m not going to complain. I listened to his hour-long explanation of the process of becoming an Auror, when I can never be employed as such, just so I could bask in the glow of his enthusiasm. Eventually he remembered that I would never be allowed to work at anything "important", and stuttered to a halt, cursing himself for an insensitive fool. He didn't believe my reassurances.

He looked so guilty when he thought he had hurt me.

I wonder if he's finished yet. It's nearly time for class, and it isn't too far... who am I kidding? It doubles my journey distance. But it does enable me to spend a little extra time with him. There really is no question about it, is there?

With statements like that, how can I continue to deny my feelings for him?

Perhaps I should tell him. We could, possibly, be happy together. But if he were to reject me, it would not only hurt me, it would hurt our friendship.

Sirius is not one to hold back from what he wants, regardless of the consequences. So if he wants me... all he has to do is ask.