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He is boneless. Long limbs sprawled out on the lumpy boxspring in the center of the one-room shack. His mind aches and spins, trying and half-failing to squeeze itself back into this body—this oddly shaped, mostly hairless figure that doesn’t quite feel right, stuffed with senses far too dull to truly feel any of the world buzzing around him.
Fingers flex and fold against the mattress, claws worn down to nubs in this form, as a breeze drifts through the bare windows and sends a shudder up what must be his spine, the cool dawn foreign against the newfound smoothness of him. His ears perk and strain against the quiet, searching for what he only just heard. A sigh of breath—deep and dreamy—startles him, and his pupils, blown wide, shrink to pinpoints in the brightening sun.
They strain against the light as they train on the details of him: on those sharp lines, all pale against the dark of curtains hanging down and around, framing him, falling over twinkling eyes that seem to pierce straight through him—under leagues and layers of this odd new existence, into the marrow of these twisted-up bones.
And then, suddenly, he’s falling—his heart pounding hard, the same wild rhythm it had while he’d weaved in between the trees.
The beast, locked and buried away, snaps awake scrambling in his unease, trying and failing to rise to his feet, his foolish new body at odds with demands that shoot shocks of pain through useless limbs. A groan slips between clenched teeth. It's meant to be a growl —a warning—one that has the figure going paler, that queer twinkle in his eye finally fading, finally fearful as the beast insists he should have been all along.
Finally, maybe now, he will leave, he thinks, something splintering in his chest with the knowing. Still he doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, just surveys the silent stranger through narrowed eyes and bated breaths — beast eager, fearful for what is sure to come next.
The stranger takes a breath, an in and out, then a step, one that ripples into gravity, shifting orbits and stars, rattling the fine bones of his fragile body, sending his senses further into overdrive, overwhelming his new form, overrunning this shrinking shack. Far too full with something nameless to somehow fit them both.
And suddenly, he’s the one afraid, frozen until he’s not, back somehow finding the wall, muscles coiled like the beast still within, instincts screaming for space that the stranger seems keen not to grant him.
He watches on in horror as the stranger’s mouth turns down at the sides, as he takes another step, raising up his hands in what must be a show of force.
This time the sound that falls out of him is far more menacing, dragged up from his chest, aching from the unsteady racing of his heart. It stops the stranger in his tracks, sends his eyes back to shining, those odd dull teeth gnawing against his full bottom lip. Slowly, so incredibly slowly, the stranger shifts his raised hands, spinning them so that the pale lines are side up in a show of supplication.
That dulls his fear just a bit, just enough that something else starts to flutter behind his ribs. Something so familiar nagging just out of sight, locked up somewhere in the back of his overrun mind.
He tries to shuffle through the scenes blurring by, tries to stop the room from spinning as he tries to recall what any of this is meant to mean: the what and who and why of it all: this odd body with odd limbs trapped in an odd room with an odd stranger staring down at him with odd eyes and hair and hands making him feel odd things that he can’t find a name for.
A name. He can’t even find a name: one for what he is, who he is, one he’s meant to answer to. Even more of the details that fall away like dew every full moon.
Another sigh snaps him from his spiral, has his eyes going wide at the sight: that odd stranger, with paths of dew dripping from those odd eyes.
Heat stings at his own eyes, dragging trails of warmth down his cheeks and falling onto bare knees, that same odd ache spreading and splitting him right down the center.
He’s shaking, he thinks, he knows, even though it’s not cold.
He should stand guard, he thinks, he knows: the beast withering within him screams.
Only he can’t. He can’t see through the heat that’s burning behind his eyes, can’t breathe through the awful sound rising from deep in his chest, keen on climbing up his throat and out of his mouth.
All he can do is tuck himself up into a tight little ball and hope that the stranger has mercy and ends him soon.
His hope stretches on, but soon never comes. He doesn’t know how long he stays like that: eyes crammed shut, back bracing and vibrating till the ache leaves him numb. All he knows is that the stranger stays, still and sighing: the sound vibrating through the room and through him, just as sad as he seems to be.
They fall into a rhythm, some silent, sacred stasis that almost feels like calm: steady and right and disturbed by the sound of a voice. One he’d know in any time or place. One etched into every detail for as far back or forward as forever.
“Moony?” The word falls between them swaying like a leaf in autumn, smooth as spun silk and dripping with honey— it is both the question and the answer to all the unknowns crashing within him; the tether yanking him into place; the being sending him up into orbit. It is home. It is sea and sky and steady ground, all the reasons distilled down into yes, right. Moony. He tests the weight of the word between his teeth, tasting the two syllables and savoring the smile it earns him from the stranger still standing several paces away.
Moony. He tries the word again, lets it linger against the tip of his tongue as his heart slams against its cage, beast keen on breaking free. It causes the room to swirl around him, every drop of sadness drying up between them, clicking some floating, fleeting fact into place.
He untucks his limbs, stretching and testing his still sore form, feeling for the first time that this strange new shape is not quite so strange. That this skin suit may just be exactly where he’s meant to be.
Here with him: the stranger with stars twinkling in odd eyes. Glowing brighter even than the sun. Brighter even than the star the stranger reminds him of: the one he’d chased across moonlit fields and beneath the dappled lattice slipping through branches overhead, back before he’d settled back into his skin. It had remained just out of reach, just as his name now seems to dance on the edge of his periphery, teasing at the tangled threads twirling behind his mind’s eye.
He considers it now: the sun, glad to gaze upon rays that peek shamelessly around the smiling stranger that gifted him with a name, standing radiant as ever, framed and angelic. Beautiful beyond the words that sit trapped and tangled, the ones he still can’t form—with chapped lips and odd teeth and a tongue that’s far too heavy.
Even still, he attempts to unravel them—willing himself to remember, to find and set free these missing bits of himself, of the stranger standing expectantly before him. For a reason he knows but only just.
And finally he does — if only just enough.
It doesn’t all come back all at once, heavy as a wave meant to wash him away, but rather it’s a gentle breeze, humming against him. A sigh of relief breathed between them.“Sirius”.
The stranger—the sun—-Sirius goes alight at that: the sound of his voice. He’s beaming bright enough to blind him, causing his heart to stutter at the sight, missing the step that Sirius takes to close the space between them.
Strong arms pull him in, enveloping him, consuming him. Sirius’ heartbeat is steady pressed against his own, lulling him into a state of calm—of warm tea on a cool English morning, of a long stroll, hand in hand, of bodies twisting together in the dark, tangled between sheets.
That final flash is enough. Enough to finally fill him with a full understanding, a realization that has heat flooding his cheeks, burning along his hairline and spreading out to lanky limbs. It earns, from Sirius, a grin dotted between dimples that makes him feel like he’s floating:
They’re both naked. Have been all along. Not that it had mattered whilst they’d romped beneath the stars. But now back in this form, it means something different— something more.
And it’s all he can do to pull away—even as his mind, his heart, his body, his beast screams at him to stay— to try and hide himself, to fold in and wrap his too-long arms around himself, to press a clumsy hand down, awkward in his attempt at modesty. He tears his eyes away, shyness—or shame—deepening the color filling him to the brim.
“Don’t hide yourself from me,” Sirius murmurs, his hand so warm where it rests against his chest—right above where his heart is hammering, right where he’s lived for at least half their lifetimes.
The weight of Sirius’ palm against him is enough to press everything apart from hunger out of his long limbs, until need is the only thing plaguing him, until every other sensation slips into nothing as he steps back again, this time to shamelessly commit to memory every curve and dip of muscle casting shadows along Sirius’ bare body.
It lights a fire that wastes little time consuming. Burning through layers of pale skin and blood and bone. Burning through every ounce of self he’s only just found. It roars and flickers and rages, till there’s no part of him left. Only the sliver of that beast that refused to be fully tucked away, humming and purring, pleased as the sun takes another step closer, pulled back in by the orbit commanding them.
It takes every ounce of his will not to drag Sirius down against him, to press him into the uncomfortable mattress. That beast still bubbling within him cries out for it. Demanding him to give in, to take him. To sink in, teeth and claws and cock, till he’s crying from need, for more.
Only he doesn’t. He can’t.
Horror washes over him as it locks him in place. It freezes over every bit of heat pooling low in his belly, coating his odd teeth and heavy tongue, making him shudder and pull his arms even tighter around himself.
The idea of hurting this lovely star stand-in is enough to make him feel physically ill, to make him finally find his voice and say the words he hopes will at least give him pause.
“You’re the one that should be hiding,” he forces out, horror curdling the want still clinging to his skin.
Sirius snorts at that, eyes dazzling in their bemusement, somehow both tender and teasing.
“I’m not afraid of you, Moony… And besides, if I hide, how would you admire the view?”
Sirius rakes a hand down his own bare chest for emphasis, dragging his gaze back so that he has to swallow around the lump, the lust, rising in his throat—dumbfounded, tongue once again too thick to form words.
The beast purrs, and his whole body goes rigid at the ripples it sends down his spine.
“Don’t be a fool, Sirius… I’m a monster.” He spits the word like a curse.
Sirius tuts his tongue—a sound that has no humor in it. “If you are, then so am I.”
He only stares at him, confused. Wondering how this celestial being could ever say and truly mean such a thing.
“You’re not the only one that’s just now finding your way back,” Sirius says, voice low, as if confessing a secret that costs him something precious to share. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how we romped beneath the stars.”
Of course not, he thinks, he knows. He could never forget the evening breeze, the soft earth pressed beneath the pads of different feet, heart racing like they had, chasing the moon and the stars they’d been named for. “You’re, like me..?” It is the question and the answer, voice filled with wonder that wins him another grin.
“We’re one and the same, Moons.”
Any last bits of his shame or fear fall away with Sirius’ words, under the heat of his gaze, set on burning and spreading, pooling low in that foreign, familiar way. Making him twitch and ache and close all the spaces between them. So that they’re fitted together in a way that makes sense, no matter the form he takes.
Every touch brings his world to the verge of ending. Every thrust drives him past the point of reason. Past the point of words. He can neither form them nor comprehend them. Can only groan and whine and beg his case beneath the punishing pace set by the sun. Can only wonder at the answers being gifted in return, the formless, shapeless sounds Sirius leans in to whisper into his ear, to breathe and lick and kiss down his throat, along the column of his spine. And as he comes, he shatters. An entire galaxy dancing against his lids while the sun just goes on moving, burning, pressing those thorough, open-mouthed kisses against every surface he seems able to reach. Until every inch of this skin he finds himself in ripples with the energy of the universe.
That too is nameless. Even as it settles in the slivers of spaces in between them, all around them: magic.