‘I don’t know how you can look at that blood and not puke.’
‘Because I’m not a lily-livered coward unfit to lick Snivellus’ arse?’
‘Dickhead.’
It was the morning after the full moon and two out of the three illegal Animagi had just changed back into their human counterparts, feeling somewhat guilty that they did it with such ease when Remus was in seven kinds of hell with his transformation. Sirius had immediately gone to Remus’ side and covered him with a blanket before he and James lifted him onto the dusty old bed. Peter, still in rat form, was snoring in the corner, having fallen asleep some hours earlier, and a slightly green James was watching Sirius as he checked Remus over for serious injury. He had never stuck around for this ritual before - his distaste for seeing his friend swimming in crimson making him flee, but now... he watched.
He saw.
His hazel eyes observed the unusually gentle hands almost caressing the scarred skin of Remus’ shoulder as Sirius used his wand to close some of the werewolf’s smaller wounds. A small crease appeared between Sirius’ eyes as he tutted over the cuts and bruises and James could see the genuine concern and fear held in the grey orbs. Sirius’ hand moved higher, touching a bruise on the back of Remus’ neck lightly with his fingertips then, almost as if by accident, those fingers combed through the hair at the nape of that slender neck.
James felt an odd catch in his chest as his mind finally registered something which had been playing on the edge of his subconscious for many months now. Sirius was a different person around Remus. They had always been close, but their relationship had changed its tenor so gradually that it hadn’t registered. Not until now; not until James saw for himself the tenderness with which the usually rambunctious, careless teenager treated their stricken friend.
They’d been having some kind of disagreement over the last few days - something neither boy would discuss with James, insisting that everything was fine - but you wouldn’t have known it from the way Sirius was treating the other boy now. James felt a nervousness - wondering if this change in Sirius' behaviour had anything to do with the reasons for that gulf that had appeared in the last week - or if it had anything to do with what had happened between the two canines during last night's transformation. Recalling the previous night's incident made James suddenly think that perhaps Sirius staying with Remus as he usually did wasn't such a good idea.
‘Sirius, maybe you should let me stay with him this time? You go back to the castle with Pete.’
The grey eyed boy looked up at James, taking umbrage with his suggestion that he should leave.
‘Why would I leave him? You can’t heal him - you‘re such a damn sook around blood. Wormtail can’t heal him… You want to leave him to bleed to death…?’
‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic, Padfoot. He’s got a few cuts, but nothing life threatening. Just let me stay this time until Pomfrey comes.’
Sirius stood up from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed next to a sleeping Remus and eyed James speculatively.
‘Why?’
‘You know why. You two have been getting closer and closer then all of a sudden, things are weird between you two. You’ve both been strange for days now then last night…’
‘Nothing happened, Prongs.’
‘He almost ripped your throat out!’
‘Shut. Up.’
Sirius, gritting his teeth, looked down at Remus, panicking when he saw him stir. There was silence until the brown-haired boy stilled then Sirius turned to face James again and spoke in a low, urgent tone before the bespectacled boy could renew his argument.
