Disclaimers: Not mine. Anyone feeling generous enough to get the rights for me…?

A/N: Another oneshot ¬_¬ I'm on a non-chaptered roll. Anyway, bon apetit!

Warnings: Might start putting these on, since a couple of people have looked at my stuff, seen it's all Remus and Sirius and mistook it for het :P In all seriousness though, I apologise to anyone I have scarred and announced this as a Wolfstar slash fic :)

Sirius Black had never been interested in girls and had never had a girlfriend. He never noticed their attentions trained on him and the hopeful flirting and had never singled anyone out. It seemed that he was simply too occupied with his friends and their fun around school to pay attention to the fairer sex. That was what his aforementioned friends thought, anyway.

When someone like Sirius wants a secret to be kept, it had better be believed that no one will ever hear of it again. The secret was that Sirius Black was a secret player. He took girls up to the astronomy tower or somewhere equally 'romantic' for a night and then broke up with them immediately after he had gotten what he wanted. This unknown fact about Sirius stayed as such due to the embarrassment and humiliation of the girls who didn't tell even their friends of the real reason for his request for their company, passing it off as an aide for homework, or advice – and of course, Sirius himself hasn't told anyone, because he is far too ashamed to admit it to one of his friends in particular in fear of being criticised.

It was Saturday night and Sirius could be found sitting atop the astronomy tower with his jeans undone and his shirt lying on the floor beside his combat boots. He had a cigarette lit between his teeth and was watching the girl, Mia or something, dress.

"I've had fun." She was saying, fastening her red skirt and picking up her shirt. Of course you have, Sirius thought listlessly, "I'll meet you at breakfast? I have to go back to the Ravenclaw common room now, or—"

"I don't want to date you." Sirius interrupted. Mia blinked, looking as though she thought she had misheard him.

"I…what?"

"I don't want to date you." He repeated, sounding almost bored with the conversation.

"But I— we— you sounded like…you were so sweet." She stuttered, confused and hurt.

"I can be when I want something." Sirius shrugged, taking a drag and opening his mouth to let the smoke float out, "I just needed to shag someone, so I found someone. You were very willing, so it was easy. Cheers for that."

Mia abandoned her shirt in aide of looking more confused and hurt instead, "Why me? Why me as your first?" she demanded. Sirius barked a harsh laugh, the grieved sound disturbing as it echoed off the walls.

"You think you're the first?" he asked, some emotion finally seeping into his voice in the form of faint disbelief, "I'm not even attracted to you, darling, so get any ideas you have about me liking you out of your head."

"Not attracted to me?" she scoffed, getting angrier by the second, "You seemed to be when you were on top of me, panting and moaning like a dog in heat."

Sirius smiled distantly at the ironic simile and took another drag as he got to his feet and stepped close to her, bending until his mouth brushed her neck, his bare chest brushing the tips of her breasts lightly, making her gasp sharply, still oversensitive after her climax.

"I'll tell you a secret." He whispered, smoke dropping from between his lips as he spoke and warming the skin on her neck and shoulder, "Whoever I'm with, I close my eyes and imagine it's someone else writhing beneath me and calling my name. Someone I can't have."

"Who?" she asked quietly, "I deserve to know who."

For some reason Sirius answer. Maybe he wanted it all to end – the longing glances in the dormitory or in class, the secret wishes in his dreams at night and when he fell asleep next to him in the common room, the breathy gasps of his name behind red hangings and hasty silencing charms.

"Remus Lupin."

Whatever the reason, it felt good to finally say it.

"Lupin?" she sneered, taking a step back, "Lupin? You're humiliating me for him? What the hell has he got that interests you so much?" she takes a deep breath as though to calm herself, "You've picked the wrong girl to play this time, Black. I'll get you back – I'll tell everyone about your little crush."

Sirius merely shrugged, "Oh, it's way more than a little crush. Go ahead, it can't hurt anymore than it already does, so go ahead. Do your fucking worst." He slid back down the wall, watching thin plumes of smoke rising from the end of his cigarette. "Get dressed and piss off already."

Mia scowled, but approached him after pulling her top on and stepping into her shoes. "Look, I feel sorry for you, so I'll give you the rest of the night to tell Lupin. Don't think it's because I'm forgiving you or anything, you're still a prick. I pity you, Black. You obviously have issues and I guess that has more than a little to do with what I've heard about your family."

"When I'm with Remus, I'm different." Sirius said quietly, shifting his gaze to look out onto the grounds, lit only by the half moon and the stars, "I'm less like them."

Shaking her head with a sigh, Mia turned and left, calling over her shoulder that she would telling people at breakfast. The astronomy tower was quiet, but for Sirius' increasingly laboured breathing once the door had swung closed. In a bout of anger and frustration, he leapt to his feet and turned to drive his fist into the wall. He gritted his teeth instead of crying out, relishing the feel of the bones in his knuckles crunching and giving way into splinters inside his hand and the warm, coppery blood oozing from the self-inflicted wounds.

Once the moment of adrenaline had dissipated, however, the quiet self-loathing returned and he sighed tiredly, bending to pull on his boot and t-shirt one-handed, dropping his cigarette and snubbing it out with a toe when he was finished. He made his way back to the Gryffindor common room after a while, hiding his hand inconspicuously behind his back as he approached James and Peter playing chess near the fire.

"Remus," he asks, feeling emotionally and physically worn out, instead of elated and relaxed seeing as he had just had sex, "Where is he?"

"With that Zoe girl, I think." James answered, capturing one of Peter's pawns, "Where have you been? I thought we were going to plan that prank on the Slytherins?"

"I had someone to see." Sirius answered non-committedly, the words with that Zoe girl floating around his head and clouding his vision, "I'm going to bed."

Ignoring James' queries of why he was turning in so early, he turned and ascended the stairs to their dormitory, where he crossed over to his bed and collapsed there, his dully throbbing hand resting carefully on his stomach and – having no more energy to fret or punch anything with his good hand – promptly fell asleep.

LINEBREAK

Remus opened the door quietly and closed it even more so, having been told that Sirius would be asleep. He looked over to check and was startled to see a pool of red soaked into his t-shirt from under and on his hand. Mad images of stab wounds and sword fights flew through Remus' mind before he grasped his rationality for which he was so infamous and approached the bleeding boy to gently shake him awake.

He pauses before he does so, though, instead looking over the black circles under his eyes and the frown he wore even in his sleep. There had been something wrong with Sirius for a while, but none of his friends knew what it was. Remus wondered if he would ever find out as he proceeded to wake Sirius.

"What have you done to yourself?" he asked gently, looking Sirius in the eye and then back at his bloodied hand, "And why come here instead of the hospital wing?" Sirius made no answer, so Remus sighed and produced his wand to perform a couple of specific healing charms and a cleaning charm to right the bone damage and the broken skin and syphon the blood from his clothes. Sirius watched him with oddly wistful and sad eyes that Remus thinks are curious but doesn't question.

"You'd make a good healer." Sirius praised, flexing his fingers experimentally.

"I can only do what will save my life by a small margin on the full moons after I've left school and there's no Madam Pomfrey to save the day." He shrugged, "Sirius, what's wrong?"

Remus expected to hear either no answer or to get told to mind his own business, especially since Sirius looked as though he was about to shout and scream, but was surprised when instead his friend's face fell and he fell forward on him, arms slung around him, face pressed into his neck. He told him everything, not crying but talking with a dead, hopeless voice that made crying the better prospect – how he seduced girls and kept it all a secret, how he was terrified that he was becoming like his family, how he had picked wrong that night and how she was going to tear his world apart tomorrow. And finally, how he felt for Remus.

"Then I came here and James told me you were with Zoe," Sirius finished lamely, "And then you came…"

Remus frowned, spotting the issue immediately, "I was only tutoring her, Sirius. I stared a couple of weeks ago, remember? Anyway, it would never work out with Zoe since I'm gay."

Sirius blinked, speechless for a minute before asking in a strained voice, "How…how long…? No, that doesn't matter – will you go out with me?"

Remus hesitated before answering, "Sirius, it sounds as though there's a whole other side of you I don't know yet and I'm not sure I would ever want to know, but surely would be inevitable if we were to get together."

Looking crestfallen, Sirius started to lie back down, eyes drifting vaguely away from Remus, who continued forcefully and pulled his friend back around to face him, "But I am willing to try."

Without waiting for a reaction, Remus leant forward and planted a brief, barely-there kiss on Sirius' parted lips. Sirius, disbelieving of what was happening, didn't react, even when Remus stood up to made his way to the door. Before he left, Remus turned and gave Sirius a wry smile.

"If you treat me like you treat your women, remember that I'm capable of leaving you in the way you have left so many others. Remember that and it'll be fine."

It was only once the door had closed softly behind him could Sirius lie back down and think coherently, his slightly aching hand touching his lips lightly, the memory of the kiss fresh and delightful in him mind. He knew, deep within him, that Remus' threat would never have to be enacted; he had never loved the girls, had never really loved anything in another way to he loved his friends, and he loved Remus – needed him like he needed oxygen and he would make him see that no matter the cost. He flexed his fingers once more and found the pain, for the first time in months, abhorrent, no longer relishing the dull throb as a filler for his unrequited feelings for a certain werewolf friend.