Coming Out- Short Cohort, 490 words:
The Transfiguration textbook had been open to the same page for forty minutes. Sirius was fairly certain Remus knew this, the same way Remus always seemed to know things; quietly, without comment, stored away somewhere behind his careful eyes.
The dormitory was empty. James had Quidditch. Peter had detention. The late afternoon light came through the tower window at a low angle and caught the dust in the air and made everything feel a bit like the moment before something happened.
Sirius had been trying to say something for three days.
"Hey, Moony." He kept his eyes on a diagram of a Switching Spell he had absolutely no intention of memorizing. "What do you think of Marlene? She's pretty fit, right?"
Remus didn't look up from his notes. "Yes?"
His quill stopped moving. Just for a second. "That's. That's good." There was a pause that lasted slightly too long. "Are you two going to Hogsmeade, or—"
"Yeah." Sirius picked at a loose thread on the duvet. The duvet was red and gold and he'd had it since first year and it was easier to look at than Remus right now. "She's not my type."
"I thought you said she was fit."
"Well she is, obviously." Sirius could hear how it sounded. Defensive. He made himself slow down. "A lot of the girls are. Marlene and Dorcas. Lily." A beat too long. "Um. Pandora?"
Beside him on the bed Remus had gone very still the way he did when he was paying close attention to something and didn't want you to know it. Sirius had catalogued this stillness over three years of shared dormitory. He knew it the way he knew the sound of the portrait hole and the way James laughed and the exact creak of the third stair.
"But they aren't—" He stopped. The thread came loose between his fingers. "They aren't who I'd want to go to Hogsmeade with, y'know?"
"I—" Remus started. Stopped. "Oh."
Sirius looked at him then, for the first time since he'd started talking. Remus was already looking back. Something in his expression was open in a way it usually wasn't, careful and frightened and something else underneath that Sirius didn't have a word for yet, at fourteen, but thought he might spend a long time learning.
Neither of them said anything. The dust moved slowly through the afternoon light.
"Would you want to go," Sirius said. Not quite a question. Just words, placed carefully into the air between them. "To Hogsmeade. With me."
Remus looked down at his notes. Then back up. He put his quill down with a small, deliberate click against the desk.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I really would."
Outside, someone was crossing the grounds toward the castle, laughing about something. Distantly, a door banged shut. The ordinary world, going about its business.
Neither of them went back to studying.
(Just a little thing about being 14 and scared and in love and not quite kicking down the closet door so much as creaking it open)
