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Notes: Remus J. Lupin has an unconventional grieving process. Set in Knockturn Alley just after OotP.

Back to the lost years. Remus had been lost then, the first time Sirius had gone, and now Sirius is gone again, dead again, gone, and Remus slips back into the night. He'd barely survived it before, stumbling drunk and hungry through Knockturn Alley, teeth bared and mouth wet with his own saliva, bitter and stale, edged with a tang of blood. Hungry. I am not functional. Don't ask me to comfort Harry. I'm not.

He knows how stupid it is. He knows that wolves shouldn't prowl where bounty hunters play--where vampires have even more of a taste for blood than he does, black shadows against black walls, watching passers-by with pale faces. It's a bright, nightmare jumble of noise and light and he's drunk, and it's okay if he slips on the mud-slick stones and several pairs of sharp eyes find him, as though spotting faltering prey. Other wolves. Other creatures. Whores, perhaps, or killers. Dealers in different kinds of death. He shouldn't be here. He knows this, but he is, because this dark web suits him so well, thrums in his blood with everything he's not allowed to be, everything only Sirius had understood in him, Sirius feral and tangled in long black hair, a blur of heat around him at night, gone, now gone gone gone.

When one of the shadows finally reaches out and pulls his cloak, near-toppling him, he doesn't resist. A pull, not a pounce. Whore, then.

A pair of bright eyes gleam at him in the shadowed alley. Too quiet, as though there are things living here that do not wish to make themselves known, and the stink of garbage is heavy on his breath. Spilt firewhiskey. Spunk. Piss.

Pale hands reach out to undo his cloak. Young hands.

Remus tries to reach into his pocket to pull out a Galleon or two, slurs something like 'How much?' but the whore slaps the money away.

'That's not what I want.'

Male voice. Still light with youth. A thin mouth smiles up at him, and Remus sees the glint of fangs. Oh.

'You're a wolf. Strong. Fair trade, yes?'

Fair. The boy's hair isn't fair. It's dark. Almost dark enough. Almost long enough. A slightly foreign accent, but Remus can ignore that. At least he'll be saving some of his Galleons tonight. 'Yes,' he answers, and the teeth glint again. His trousers are undone.

Boy's hand around his cock, sweet peasant thumb rough against his sac. Stroking the small hairs there, sliding between the silk skin of his balls, parting and lifting and up.  Wait, he wants to say, but he's half-hard already and getting harder, blood rushing from his brain, and he knows how loud the pounding of his pulse must be to those delicately whorled ears, because he hears the boy draw in a gasp.

'Where,' Remus tries to ask , but the hand on his cock strokes suddenly, firmly, and a hot tongue laps at the head, hungry and wet and leaving cool shudders when it pulls back.

The boy says something, something that could be 'salt' or 'yes', or maybe both, but he doesn't bring his whole mouth down around Remus, wary of his own fangs. Careful. Careful. Hungry. Just licking. Puffs of breath that burn Remus' skin, the hand moving faster and faster on his cock. He's almost coming. He's so drunk and he hasn't fucked anyone since Sirius' death, and his cock is so hard so hard so hard.

'Stop,' Remus gasps, and the boy does, getting up and brushing his knees off as though finicky, smiling up at Remus. A sweet smile. Pleased smile. Saying: I could have made you come like that.

The boy lifts his robes, directs Remus' hands to his hips. The young cock is hard, visible in the darkness only because Remus is unnatural, but the boy's unnatural too, so that's okay.

'Pick me up,' the boy says, calmly, and Remus does, pushing him against the wall so that the boy's legs go around his waist.

Are you-- he wants to ask, but the whore answers by saying: 'I'm ready. Just push.'

He does.

And nearly comes from it.

The boy is wet, from lube or someone else's come or both, and he only makes a little whimper when Remus enters him, as though the stretch is nothing unusual. He fits around Remus beautifully. A warm, tight, pulsing glove. Too smooth and impersonal to be a hand, even pressure all up and down, but beautiful, so beautiful.

'Yes,' the boy gasps, or maybe it's him, or both, but it doesn't matter and he starts moving. The whore's robes are black, peasant's robes just as rough as his hands, and they scratch Remus' thighs wonderfully. So dirty-good to be doing this here, with the stink all around him, cradling a slut close like a child. Moving in-out-in-out-in-out, a rhythm that beats with his blood, and he isn't surprised when the boy tilts his head to lick at Remus' neck. It's a rough hot scrape, not affectionate as a lover's would be, but deliberate, seeking, an unholy living thing that searches for the point of his pulse and sucks on it, harder and harder but with lips only, no teeth, until Remus starts to buck, shoving the boy hard against the wall, hearing his own grunts in his ears.

Finally, finally, he feels the sharp prick of fangs--too sharp after the soft heat of that mouth, twin needles of pain that pierce his neck and Remus screams, instinct telling him to fight even as his cock jerks at the pull of it, the pull of that mouth on his throat, rendering him prey, sucking and sucking a hot rush of blood from his neck.

His hands tighten on the boy's hips and he slams, in and deep and true, but the fangs don't dislodge from his throat--they only sink deeper, suck harder, and he can hear the boy moan against his skin in a strange wet buzz. It sends a knife of foreign lightning through his veins, starting from the pulse-point at his throat and shooting down his shoulders, arms, chest, finally settling in his groin and burning out of his cock in a sudden rush of hot, wet come.

He thinks he hears the boy scream too, but the sound is muffled against his throat--his hips can't stop moving and he can't stop coming, and the warm splashes against his stomach, three pulses in quick, frantic succession, tell him that the boy is coming too.

The fangs slide out of his neck--slow, hot, burning, feeling like they'll pull his arteries out with them. The bright flare of pain almost sends his knees buckling, but the wall supports him, the boy supports him, and his cock is soft and slipping out of its haven now, tingling and cooling in the open air as the boy lifts slightly to let it out.

'Yes,' sighs the mouth against his throat, the tongue no longer seeking there, but gentle, like a cat's, lapping him up, closing his wounds. He feels a slight pull, as if thread is sewing him back together--and he can feel the trickle of blood stop, so that the boy's only licking the remains of it now, leaving Remus' skin cold and shivering and whole when he finally draws back.

Remus lowers him to the ground.

Those poor black robes fall back into place, and Remus steps back, watching as the boy runs his hand through his hair and straightens his robes. His face is still pale, still thin, but his eyes look brighter and his lips look sweeter, fresher, and he's quite lovely, really. Remus has the ridiculous urge to ask him his name, when he was Turned, what his family thought about it--but that's stupid, and no one answers those questions anyway, and this child might not be a child at all, might be much older than several of Remus' lifetimes put together.

Thank you, he thinks of saying, but that isn't right--this was a trade, after all--and the boy's looking at him too, sated yet cautious, as he pushes himself away from the wall.

For a moment Remus feels a thrill of fear--but that's ridiculous, considering what he's just done--and the boy only steps forward and brushes his mouth in a kiss, soft and slightly damp, his breath scented with blood.

'Behind the Hog's Head,' the boy says quietly, and it makes no sense until he continues, 'Mondays and Thursdays. I work there.'

Remus stares at him, at that thin, solemn mouth--and then there is a sudden wind he has to close his eyes against, that whips his hair about him, and when he opens his eyes the boy is gone.

He doesn't feel so drunk anymore.

It occurs to him, distantly, that he's rather dizzy--and that if he wasn't what he was, that if he were human, he might have lost consciousness by now. You're a wolf. Strong. Fair trade, yes?

'Fair trade,' he murmurs. He stands there for a moment, feeling the silence deepen uncannily around him--the smell of his own come and of his blood clearer somehow than the smell of the other muck here, louder, as if smells were sounds. He takes out his wand and whispers a cleaning spell, ridding himself of the whore's come and the dirt that had clung to his sleeves from the wall--and then he does up his trousers, tries not to shiver at every brush of the night breeze, and Apparates himself away.

Home is quiet when he gets there. Everything feels unreal--dark shapes of furniture that he stumbles past. He toes off his boots and collapses into bed, into familiar, dusty sheets, and feels clean for the first time in weeks.

Mondays and Thursdays. Mondays and Thursdays. He thinks about it, absently, but he knows that he won't go back.