Ownership, RL/OC, RL/SB; NC-17. Written Pre-HBP.

[sam_storyteller]

Summary: Remus doesn't own his body, after all -- so why should he care who else does? MWPP-era.
Warnings: Portrayal of underage prostitution.

Also available at AO3.

***

For a long time, the story itself was so tawdry and yet somehow innocent that the woman who employed him, the mistress of the house, told him to tell it every chance he got. The bleeding hearts would tip better, she said, and the perverts would get off on it and tip better too. So he told it from the start, the fight -- though never what it was about -- and the loneliness, and the searching....

"Maybe I don't want to be cured, did you ever think of that?"

It had gone past rational conversation long ago, perhaps years ago; perhaps it had never been rational conversation, just blind obedience on his part because they were his parents, and because this was what they'd always done. Desperation and love on their part, he was sure it was love, but sometimes it felt malicious, as though it was their way of saying to him you can never forget what you are, because we love all of you but that part. And no matter how much he wanted to be loved as a whole person, without division or revulsion, they never would. Never could.

"Don't want to be cured?" his father roared.

"Maybe I don't need curing!" Remus roared back, all six feet and sixteen years of him. His father was unaccustomed to being roared at, and almost rocked back on his heels.

"Nonsense, boy!"

"Every bloody summer -- "

" -- watch your mouth, Remus -- "

"EVERY GODDAMNED FUCKING SUMMER," Remus shouted. "For four years you took me everywhere but where I wanted to be, which was here, with mum and Octavia, and every damn summer since I started school you dragged me off somewhere and paid some quack -- yes, dad, they're con-men, and you should be able to tell one by now instead of spending your Galleons on them -- "

"I will not be spoken to this way in my own house!" Rufus Lupin shouted back.

"Your house? Your house? This is my body! And you know what? My body doesn't want to go to Siberia! My body wants to stay in England and visit my mates and -- "

"Your body," his father growled, "wouldn't happen to be interested in that Evans girl you keep getting owls from, would it?"

Remus was dumbstruck. If he protested he'd look like a child, and if he agreed -- not that he would -- he'd look like some kind of horny adolescent.

Which, granted, he was, but not about Lily and that wasn't the point of the fight and Remus, who had a mind honed by patience and intelligent company to the sharpness of an ice pick, was not to be diverted from the central argument by petty distractions, and was insulted his father would try. He left the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

In the living room, across the hallway, his younger sister flinched as she pretended to be reading a novel.

"We're not going to Siberia," Remus announced. Octavia looked up, guiltily.

"It's not eavesdropping if you can hear a person halfway down the block," she said.

"Will you tell mum when she comes in?"

"How much?" Octavia asked curiously.

"Do I look like I care?" Remus demanded, and ran up the stairs two at a time. He slammed his bedroom door, too.

She heard him in Flourish & Blotts the next day, and she always tells him to skim over this part, so he merely says that he ran away from home and was telling one of his friends about it when he caught her eye.

Sirius leaned against the rack of inkpots in the bookstore, casually dropping one into his pocket. Only rich boys stole so blatantly, Remus thought, stole to see if they could get away with it, not out of any need.

"What do you mean, you ran away?" he asked. "You can't just run away. Aren't they going to come looking for you?"

"I told mum I was going, and she gave me a couple of Galleons and said she hoped in a few days things would calm down," he answered.

"She never just let you run off that way."

"No, I told her I had a place to stay."

"Where?"

"She didn't ask. It strains her nerves, you know. Anyway, Florian Fortescue said he'd let me sleep on the cot in the back of the store-room if I help him stock shelves and clean up at closing time. It's a free roof over my head, and all the chocolate sauce I can steal."

Sirius looked at him admiringly. "You just left?"

"I was tired, and it seemed the easiest way. It's exhausting, being in a fight with dad."

"Are you allowed to do that?"

"What, leave? Well, I suppose if he was really all that upset he could come looking for me and have the Aurors haul me home, but he knows it wouldn't do any good. Didn't you ever pretend to run away from home when you were a kid?"

"No," Sirius answered. "I wouldn't know where to begin."

"Well, for me, beginning means finding a job that doesn't pay in whipped cream and creaky bedsprings," Remus sighed. He knew better than to ask if Sirius could put him up for the summer; there were anti-werewolf wards on the Black family's town-house, and they only ever went to the country estate in late summer, a good two months off. James was on holiday with his parents until the middle of July, and Peter's dad had just passed on, so now wasn't the time to be imposing oneself as a houseguest. Besides, Peter lived too far away from town for Remus to easily get a job while staying with him, and Remus hated taking advantage of Peter's good nature anyway. James and Sirius did too much of that already.

"How much have you got?" Sirius asked. Remus rummaged in his pockets, and came up with four Galleons, six Sickles, and three Knuts, plus three pounds forty in Muggle money. Sirius looked down at the coins and sighed.

"That's pathetic, you know," he said. "It's not even enough for books."

"Ta, Padfoot."

"And what're you going to do during the -- "

"That's three weeks away," Remus hissed. "And nothing you should be talking about in public."

Sirius scooped the money, Muggle coins and all, out of his hand. "I'll be right back," he said, moving towards the door.

"Sirius, what are you doing with my -- "

"Stay there!" Sirius said cheerily, and let the front door of the shop close in his face. Remus couldn't think what he was planning to do with the money -- knowing Sirius, he was off to buy something illegal and intoxicating with it.

"He's an attractive man, your friend," said a voice nearby, and Remus started and turned. A woman was watching him -- middle-aged, but what they generally call 'well preserved'.

"Yes, and he knows it," Remus replied.

"You're a Hogwarts student?"

Remus examined her. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

She smiled, and shook her head. "My apologies. I'm more curious than is good for me."

She disappeared into the bookshelves, and Remus backed away from the door as a whole crowd of people came in. Sirius had told him to stay, so he stayed, keeping himself occupied with a copy of Exploring Sorcery: A Guide For Advanced Studies until Sirius returned, whistling.

"Hold out your hand," Sirius said. Remus obediently did so. A paper bag with the Gringotts Bank logo was placed in it. It was heavy, and the twisted-shut top began to untwist as soon as Sirius released it.

"Sirius -- there's got to be twenty Galleons in here," Remus said, staring down at it. "What did you do, use my money to buy a knife and rob some shopkeeper somewhere?"

"Family investments," Sirius said. "I asked the bloke at the bank to take what you had and give me back what you'd have at the end of the summer if you invested it."

"In what, a device that spins gold out of straw?" Remus asked.

"No, I think it's land in uh...China somewhere," Sirius said. "That'll feed you properly for a little while, anyway, and it's not a loan, because the money will be in my account by end of summer anyway. Want to go down to the Quidditch shop and look at the new magazines with me?"

Sirius could turn a man's fortunes around at the drop of a hat; Remus admired his ability to fit the world together in such a way that it suited him, without any apparent effort at all. It was not Remus' destiny to redesign the world to fit himself; it was merely his fate to be the friend, and occasionally the target, of others who did so.

From the shelves of books near the door, the woman watched him and his dark-haired friend leave, two graceful figures moving with the self-assurance that comes of being young and ignorant.

And this, between the first time he set eyes on her and the time she brought him to her house, is where his voice gets husky when he's telling the story to the woman in the bed behind him or the man smoking a cigarette at the window. How they knew where to find him, and when he stepped outside that evening after closing, to take in a few breaths of fresh summer air, two men took him by the elbows and led him away...

He had been told if he didn't struggle he wouldn't be hurt, and while he knew he could snap their arms backwards at the elbow if he was so inclined, it didn't seem like much of a kidnapping. They were merely very firmly holding onto his biceps as they guided him down a back-alley parallel to Diagon. Only when they turned into Knockturn did he begin to worry, but they stayed in the more tame sections of it.

"Where are you taking me?" he inquired, politely.

"To see the mistress," one of them replied.

"Listen, if it's money you -- "

"Please don't talk," the other one said, equally politely. "We don't want your money."

Remus kept silent, wondering how quickly he could get to his wand if he shrugged free, and how long they'd be distracted by broken bones. He didn't want to hurt them any more than they apparently wanted to hurt him, but he would if they tried anything funny.

They stopped in front of a narrow three-story town-house with a green door, squeezed between a small Italian restaurant and a shop with papered-over windows which proclaimed itself to be a Market of Delights. The men let go of his arms.

"Do I get to run away now?" he asked sarcastically. One of them shoved him forward, up the stairs to the entryway, and the other followed on his heels, unlocking the door. He was pushed inside, firmly but gently, and found himself in a prettily furnished living-room, full of couches, with a large fireplace set into one wall. He had barely a moment to take it in before he was forced up another flight of stairs.

A door on his left was opened, but they didn't follow him this time; he walked through of his own accord, and it shut behind him.

It was a suite of rooms, with architectural charms to make the inside much bigger than the outside could possibly allow for. He could see a bedroom to his right, with only a semi-transparent curtain instead of a door; to his left there was a small, windowed dining room, light and airy.

In this room, which had a rolltop desk, a few chairs, and another of the long, low couches from the downstairs living room, there was also a naked woman.

He blinked, blushed, and glanced away. Clearly someone had got the wrong idea somewhere along the line.

"Good evening," she said.

"I think there's been a mistake," he replied.

"No mistake. It's all right; look at my face," she ordered, and he dragged his eyes reluctantly back. She smiled slightly.

"I saw you in the bookstore," he blurted.

"And I saw you and your friend, and heard you, too," she purred. "That's why you're here. You do blush prettily. I suppose you're a virgin?"

"Excuse me?" he asked, startled into forgetting where he was and how little she was wearing. She laughed.

"You said you needed a job, one that paid in more than food and a cot in a store-room," she said.

"I had a loan," he answered.

"Twenty Galleons? That might feed you, but it won't buy books for the school year, or robes, or any of the things a young man really needs," she said huskily. "I have an offer, if you're willing to hear it."

"Ma'am, could you put some clothes on?" he asked desperately.

"You could take yours off," she pointed out.

"I don't think that would be such a good idea," he said, backing towards the doorway.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

He stammered. "R-richard."

"Richard, I'm about to make you an offer that will pay twenty Galleons a day. Better, if you're any good at it."

Twenty Galleons a day was a fortune. Twenty Galleons a day meant he could buy new school robes tomorrow.

"Nothing legal pays that well," he said.

"Not true. Nothing moral, certainly, but there are no laws against the sex trade, not in the Wizarding World. Believe me, I'd know," she continued. She stood up in a fluid movement, and plucked up a white robe that was lying across a chair, shrugging into it.

"Sex trade?" he asked, as his brain caught up with his libido.

He tells the customers, because it makes for a better story, that he held out, that he resisted, and finally he gave in out of sheer desperation. The truth was, by the time the words were out of his mouth, he was already considering it, because twenty Galleons a day was twenty bloody Galleons a day. And because his body wasn't his own anyway, why should he care who paid to own it for a few hours?

She served him a late dinner that night with three other women and one other man, in a warm kitchen behind the friendly downstairs living room. They were nice people, some of them not terribly bright, but interesting and funny, and Remus liked them. They told him stories about patrons they had who gave them presents, books and things to wear, jewellery, charmed toys. One of the women told the mistress that he was too young, but the mistress said he could lie, and anyway people would pay more if they knew, so why should he, and Remus thought she had a point.

It made his stomach squirm to really be considering it, but it was all so surreal. They were paid highly, the mistress said, because so few people had to take their sort of work to get by. One could always make one's fortune scamming Muggles with leprechaun gold or Obliviate spells, so really they were more honest, since they only provided a service others wanted anyway.

"Why do you do it?" he asked them, and one of the women, Bethany, said she liked it. One was a vampire, couldn't hold a real job, and one simply hadn't the ambition to find one. The other man, Alex, regarded him with dark blue eyes and said that it was none of anyone's business why he chose to do it, and if Richard knew what was good for him, he would give the same answer.

"Perhaps Richard isn't bent," one of the women said.

"...bent?" Remus asked, hesitantly.

"Alex takes them both," she answered. "Men and women. Bent. Like Bethany."

"Bethany isn't bent," Alex replied.

"Very true," Bethany said proudly. Remus gave her a confused look. "Oh, the poor virgin," she said with a smile. "I don't care what bits they have."

"Bethany serves...special requests," the mistress put in. "People who prefer to...dominate. Or be dominated, to be fair. Not bent so much as..."

"...twisted," Bethany finished with a grin.

"Would...would I have to..."

"You might like it," Alex said.

"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't," Remus answered, though an excited spark deep inside him was starting to point out that perhaps bent was the reason he sometimes thought about James or Sirius when he was in the shower...

"You'd have your own room," the mistress was saying, while Remus continued to study Alex, who looked back imperturbably. "We open for business at five each day, with dinner and sometimes a show, if Bethany and Alex feel obliging. We entertain ladies and gentlemen from six until three, and generally sleep until noon. You will not be required to wash your own clothes or linens, and your day until four is yours to do with as you please."

"All day?" Remus asked.

"We sometimes entertain particular customers during the lunch hour, by appointment only."

He could live here. He could be paid. He could still spend the day with Sirius, mooching around Diagon Alley -- and no one would have to know.

And all you have to do is have sex with anyone who asks, said a voice in the back of his head, but he ignored that.

As if she'd heard his silent reservations, Bethany added, "We don't let just anyone in here, you know. Everyone comes recommended. We can afford it."

"With him around, we could afford to cut out half the people we do serve," Alex said, and they laughed, and said he was a very pretty boy. That was a very new experience for Remus. Clever and tidy he was used to; pretty was new.

Nobody ever asks him about the first time, because nobody who buys the body of another person wants to think that there was a time when they weren't as they are now, when they were lonely or frightened or inexperienced. Nobody who buys another person wants to think they are anything other than an immortal, never-ageing toy who has always been and will always be thus.

Remus doesn't mind. He doesn't have any urge to tell. After a few weeks, it's so familiar that he's begun to forget the first time, anyway.

The warm, book-lined study is quiet, for the most part. The room was chosen on purpose, because the sun would set through the windows that are just high enough over the roof of the house next to it to let in the golden shafts of light. Dust dances in the air, settling slowly on books open on the long mahogany table. The chairs at the table are empty, but the green-shaded library lamp is still on.

Tall bookshelves stand against the walls, lined with leatherbound volumes purchased cheap at second-hand shops, because old habits die hard, cheek-by-jowl with brand new scholarly books and paperback novels, because their owner has been trying very hard to break himself of old habits. There is a desk with thick creamy paper on it, rich ink, new quills with gold-tipped nibs, and books open here, too. A doorway leads off into another room, a bedroom, but the bedroom is empty.

There is an Empire couch with thick padded upholstery, deep scarlet velvet, and draped over the couch is a loose-limbed figure with his head tilted back, and breaking across the silence is a long, low moan from his open mouth.

"Bad boy," he whispers, and reaches down to tangle one of his hands in Remus' hair. He's easy to please, the fantasy always the same -- many of Remus' -- Richard's -- clients are. They see the gangling young frame, the boyish face, the conservative clothes, and they think student, and they want to be his teacher. Some of them actually want to teach him things, things he's already learned from the others but pretends to be innocently, boyishly happy to learn; some of them just want to control him, and they're a little silly, but they pay well and it's their dignity, not his, after all.

This client used to be Alex's, but Remus -- Richard -- looks younger, is younger, and after seeing Alex do this a few times it's really nothing he couldn't pick up quickly, especially with Alex right there waiting to be practiced on. He darts his tongue out across his lips as he pulls back, wetting them again before continuing. He won't wear his Hogwarts uniform, but he does wear students' clothing, a white shirt and blue jumper and tie, black trousers, shined shoes.

"Up," the man orders, and Remus eases his way along the body underneath him, until he's settled in the man's lap, straddling him, his conservative schoolboy's trousers rubbing against him. That's all the client really wants, to get off on those trousers. Remus doesn't even have to undress.

And afterwards he's paid money for more books, for good food, for sweets from Diagon Alley when he's out with Sirius and Peter and more recently James, back from holiday. Money for when school starts and he needs it. Money enough that he can take days off around the full moon and floo up to Hogsmeade and run around the forest with his friends and no-one cares.

There have been two letters from his mum. He hasn't answered, though he knows Sirius wrote her saying Remus is fine, he's a little quiet but he has a job somewhere and he's making good money. Sirius himself is having troubles with his own parents, but Remus is sure things will work out, there; Sirius might hate them but he doesn't hate his nice warm bed at the townhouse, his allowance, his trust account at Gringotts. Sirius doesn't even know where Remus sleeps at night, hasn't asked. None of them have.

They probably think he's ashamed of wherever it is he's living; the truth is, he just doesn't want to get caught. James would never stand for his friend being a whore, after all.

He changes clothing before going downstairs to see if anyone is enjoying a drink or two while they wait; his favourite client is there, a redhead named Eliza, who is far too young to be here, really. Remus doesn't know why she comes, since it's not as though she couldn't get a date (or eight or nine) if she wanted. Perhaps she doesn't like entanglements.

"Richard," she says warmly. "Are you free?"

"Come up to my study," he answers, courteously. Eliza likes to think of it as visiting a friend, and while she is imaginative in bed, she's rarely ever...twisted.

Bent.

Not like Remus. Then again, he is what his clients want him to be.

He pours her a glass of brandy in the bedroom and they drink, discussing a new novel he's been reading that she wants to borrow. Their fingers brush; he takes her glass; and she's underneath him on the bed, his lips sliding over her left breast, her thighs around his hips as he bucks inside her.

Between being sixteen and being a werewolf he's never had trouble getting it up, certainly not for Eliza.

He lives two lives, neither entirely real, but when the nights start getting cooler it comes home to him just what he's done all summer; he's been writing to his parents now, just once or twice, and he's bought all his books for the school year, but packing up his Hogwarts trunk somehow forces him to compare himself to the boy he was at the beginning of the summer. Remus Lupin, Prefect, who didn't even jerk off if there was another boy in the room -- how could he be the one who has lived in this book-lined study, letting people use his body for their own pleasure? Then again, how can he be the one who walks out into the forest every twenty-eight days and turns into a howling beast?

Neither of his lives are real, not the Hogwarts boy with the perfectly pressed trousers and not the pretty young man whose only purpose is to please you. Nothing is real; there are just two different fantasy worlds.

Four weeks into the school year, after the high drama of Sirius running away late in the summertime (picked a fine time to start taking after me, Sirius, Remus had said with a grin) and the dull period of settling into classes, they had their first Hogsmeade weekend. Sirius and James were already well-known to Rosmerta, who extended Sirius a tab she knew was probably never going to be paid, but everyone knew Sirius Black had been disowned and he discovered friends in surprising places.

It wasn't the first time Remus had been in Hogsmeade since school started, but the others didn't know that. They assumed he was spending his Friday nights studying in the library and he let them think it; he was always in his own bed when they all woke up in the morning, and if they wondered at his diligence, well, it was Remus, after all. James and Sirius themselves snuck out to the pub on Saturday nights, and Peter had a standing date with some fifth-year Ravenclaw, so nobody even noticed his absence, really.

Remus wondered if he was always going to have a house for each secret he kept. There was the Shack, of course, for his lycanthropy, hardly even used anymore except for recoveries after the full moon; there was also the cottage that he had rented a week before school began, in which to see his clients. He'd moved some of his bookshelves and the couch, most of the books, the bed and the writing desk into it, and installed the portkey between London and Hogsmeade himself. His clients could simply go to a brass sculpture in the corner and touch it lightly, between the hours of six and two on Friday and Saturday nights, and be transported.

And if it was a little exensive, well, his clients paid more for him now that he wasn't available as often. He'd simply demanded it, with an arrogance hardly characteristic of Remus Lupin. They'd accepted his terms unquestioningly from Richard the whore.

Now he sat in the Three Broomsticks with his hands around a flagon of warm mead, while Sirius flirted with Rosmerta and James told bawdy jokes, and the pair of men in the next booth over whispered to each other.

Remus heard every word, above the clanks and clicks and voices of the pub.

"...out on the outskirts, do you know the house?"

"No, where is it?"

"Listen, I'll show you -- "

"Do we just go in?"

"I don't know. All I know is my mate said for eight Galleons -- "

"Eight Galleons! For eight galleons his cock had better be gold-plated -- "

"Cheaper than going to London for it!"

Remus wondered who had put out the rumour about him only charging eight Galleons. Ten was his minimum, and that was before he had to cover rent on the cottage.

"Just one bloke?"

"Interested in a girl?" the other asked.

"Curious, that's all."

"Couldn't stop talking about his hands, was what struck me."

"Hands? What the hell good are hands?"

This pair, Remus thought to himself, would never have made it past their front door, in London. The talk was good, he supposed; it would bring in business, and perhaps he could creep away Thursday nights too, for just an hour or two.

"Remus?" James asked. "Hey, Moony!"

Remus looked up. "Sorry, what?"

"You look beat, old man, and it's weeks till the full moon yet," James said.

"Keep your voice down," Remus said tiredly. It never did any good.

"Come on, buck up, let's go to Zonko's."

"Let's," Remus agreed. He wanted to get away from the perverts in the booth behind him.

He was out the door of the pub before he realised that he'd actually thought of someone as a pervert. Remus Lupin, who was undeniably bent and would fuck almost anyone with ten Galleons and an ounce of good taste.

He'd have to find some way to keep his face reasonably hidden, if locals started coming round. If Madam Rosmerta, for example, got the idea to visit the little cottage on the outskirts of town, he'd be in a world of trouble faster than you could say kissing is extra.

He stopped in front of the shop next to Zonko's, which already had Hallowe'en costumes in its windows. There was a mask in one corner, not fancy at all and therefore not rating the attention of the feathered confections more prominently displayed -- a plain brass-coloured mask, a fox's face, that covered eyes and forehead and part of the nose.

"You go on," he said to the others. "I have to buy some new ties."

Did you hear about the cottage outside Hogsmeade? A man lives there who moved up from London, and for ten Galleons if he likes the look of you he'll do things you couldn't imagine, he has such a mouth and such hands. When I went there last week he was so kind, too.

Remus hears the talk. Even at school. Two of the Slytherin girls have pocket-money to spare and there's a Ravenclaw boy he does for discount because he's nice-looking, and so long as he remember to talk softly they don't know it's him. He wonders if they would anyway; they pass him in the hall without a second glance at the brown-haired Gryffindor trailing along in Sirius Black's shadow.

He managed to get away early that Friday, the last Friday before the holiday. His family wanted him to come home for Christmas, and he would, though a week later than the other students. He told them it was Prefect business. In reality it was just that the amount of money he could make with a week of spare nights would pay for everyone's Christmas present that year.

The candles were lit in the study, the reception room if you liked; the bed had freshly pressed sheets on it, and the snow outside hazed over everything past his windows. Remus was sitting in the kitchen, however, the place in this cottage that was his; no clients here. Just a cup of tea and a book, and some Quidditch posters on the wall, because he liked Quidditch and in this room he could have what he liked, instead of being what someone else liked. It was the only place in the entire world, really, where such was the case.

Eliza was coming tonight, she'd made a special appointment, and a few other women -- the Slytherin girls were coming together, which should be entertaining. His last client of the evening was a Hogsmeade local, an older man who worked in the Three Broomsticks and who'd asked if he could bring along a friend who was too nervous to come on his own.

Remus had put an energising potion in his tea, and was still hoping for a nap between the Slytherins and Mr. Greenworthy.

("Can I bring someone along?" Mr. Greenworthy had asked, lying in the big bed while Remus sat at the window, waiting to see if there was anything else he was wanted for. "Next week-end, I mean."

Remus smiled. "Yes, but you do realise this isn't a taxi service -- you can't double up and split the bill."

Another client might have been offended, but he knew well enough to predict that Mr. Greenworthy would laugh. "No, I'll pay for both of us. He has good manners, and he's a good sort of bloke. We got to talking one day, and he said he didn't dare come here on his own."

"I do frighten the children," Remus replied, tilting his head and gazing through the mask's eyeholes at his client.

"I think he's more frightened to imagine he might enjoy it," Mr. Greenworthy had said.

"Might?" Remus had asked, with a tilt of the lip.)

He trusted Greenworthy, who had recommended good clients to him before, and it was -- well, not fun, precisely, but interesting to watch the shy ones explore him. He imagined Alex, who had taught him most of what he knew, had felt much the same way about him.

But first he had other clients to be concerned with, especially the Slytherin girls. The one who had suggested the threesome was fond of snakes, and he didn't mind them; he'd found that setting one or two charm-controlled little creatures to crawling up her legs and across her belly and breasts was an overwhelming experience for both of them. The other girl was not so enthusiastic, but he was confident she'd come round, if she were properly distracted.

Naked, streaked with sweat and breathing heavily, one of the snakes slipping its way around his neck and down across his shoulderblade, his hand cupping one girl's breast and tongue in her mouth while he thrust against another, a second snake exploring the broad valley of her stomach, he did think that there were men who would kill to be where he was, who would pay, and here they were pouring their gold into his lap.

He slept on the kitchen cot, mask on the nightstand beside him, having washed himself briefly enough to feel clean and warm and skin-sensitive. The alarm woke him ten minutes before Greenworthy and his guest were going to arrive, and he brushed his hair and slipped the mask over his face, and went into the recieving room and locked the door behind him.

A painless transition, not like the Change, and welcome for that; stepping from one room to another, locking Remus up in the kitchen and letting Richard out to sprawl on the Empire couch, white shirt unbuttoned at the throat and black trousers cinched tight against flat stomach. And Richard wasn't dangerous to people. Richard was there only to make people happy. Richard was a beast of complete pleasure.

No-one wanted to cure Richard or fix him.

Mr. Greenworthy, being local, didn't require a portkey; Remus heard him stomping the snow off his boots on the front step, and stayed where he was, slouched a little, one elbow propped on an arm-rest while his hand drifted across his lips, legs splayed, smiling a little. The door opened and a chilly breeze blew through, ruffling his hair where his fringe hung over the mask.

"Mr. Greenworthy," he said softly, when Greenworthy stepped into the light of the recieving room. "Welcome back."

"Richard," Mr. Greenworthy said, and there was respect in his voice, which was nice. You respected a skilled craftsman, and Remus liked to be thought of as such. "I'm not interrupting anything?"

"No, I've been waiting for you," Remus answered, rising. "And you've brought a friend of yours, too?" he asked, as he crossed the room. Mr. Greenworthy nodded and moved out of the doorway between the entry and the reception room.

"Come in," Remus urged, with a warm smile. "I don't bite."

The man stepped into the light of the room, and it took Remus a second to recognise his face; the candlelight flickering over it combined with damp hair hanging across his eyes (charmingly, he thought, until the realisation hit him and all rational thoughts fled) made him momentarily unrecognisable.

But then he lifted his face a little, and Sirius' electric blue eyes stared at him not with shock or surprise but with accusation.

"This is Mr. Black," Mr. Greenworthy said, breaking the tense silence.

"Of course," Remus heard himself say, smoothly. "Welcome to my home. Can I pour you a drink, Mr. Black? It's a cold night out."

"A little wine would go a treat," Mr. Greenworthy said agreeably.

"Wine it is," Remus murmured, crossing to a small rack of bottles in one corner and pouring three glasses, each a third full. As he poured he heard a whisper that only werewolf ears could have caught -- I'm all right now. Maybe I could see him alone for a bit? and Mr. Greenworthy's hasty Enjoy yourself. No, don't worry about the cost.

"As a matter of fact," Greenworthy said, "I'm feeling a bit under the weather this evening."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," Remus answered, handing Sirius his wine.

"I think I'll toddle along. You'll be all right with Mr. Black, won't you?"

"I look forward to it. Whose account?"

"Mine."

"Excellent. Until Tuesday, then, I believe?"

"Tuesday it is!" Greenworthy said cheerfully, as Remus helped him into his coat. He stayed watching the older man until the door had shut, and his crunching footsteps in the snow had faded away. There was no point in trying to cover, now. He reached up one hand and pulled the cords at the back of his head, freeing the mask and lifting it away from his face.

Silence. He turned, finally. Sirius had sunk onto the edge of the couch, as if fully touching it would infect him somehow. He still had the wineglass in his hand.

"There's been some mistake," Sirius said.

"You came here tonight expecting to fuck a whore, didn't you, Sirius?" Remus asked, with brittle cheer.

"Why are you here?"

"Mr. Greenworthy was willing to pay for both of you; very generous of him. Are you fucking him, too?"

"What -- no!"

"You needn't sound so disgusted, he's very good at it."

"Stop staying those things."

Remus tilted his head. "They're what you came to hear."

"Not from you!"

"Yes. That's regrettable," Remus agreed. He poured Greenworthy's wine into his own glass and sipped it, seating himself in the chair near the writing desk. "Of course, having paid -- "

"And this is your job? This is the job you had that let you buy books and school robes and dinners -- Merlin, I ate dinner paid for by money you earned -- "

"You can pay me back, if it's so disgusting as all that."

Sirius looked so pained that he regretted saying it, and Remus sighed, leaning forward, threading his hands together. "This is more embarrassing for you, really. For me it's an honest living, one of the few open to...people like me, and I'm impervious to disease, giving or getting it. For you it's a risk and a guilty pleaure, like being caught eating one too many chocolate frogs."

"Someone's done this to you," Sirius accused, suddenly. "Someone's threatened to tell what you are -- " He realised the mistake as soon as he said it, and a horrified look crossed his face. "I didn't mean it that way, Moony, I swear!"

"Nobody's blackmailing me into it, if that's what you mean," Remus said gently, though anger pushed against the surface for a moment. What you are. This was mingling Remus and Richard together and no good could come of it.

"You chose this?" Sirius demanded.

"As you said, it afforded me books and robes, and food for myself and my friends."

Sirius seemed to be thinking again, deeply. "All summer?"

"Yes."

"And Friday nights?"

"And Saturday, yes. My clients pay more now that I'm unavailable the rest of the week."

"They're not clients, Moony, they're -- "

"Before you finish that, Sirius, I'd like to remind you that you came here tonight of your own free will."

"Your mum is going to have kittens when she finds -- "

"She isn't going to find out, is she? You certainly aren't going to tell her," Remus said, suddenly furious. "You've no right to come traipsing in here planning to pay to fuck some boy you don't even know -- "

He stopped.

An interesting thought, that.

"Why Sirius," he said, with false pleasantness, "You did expect a boy, didn't you?"

Sirius turned furiously crimson, but he didn't speak.

"Now was this just an experience to talk about at the pub next week, which doesn't bode well for my opinion of you, or was this because you wanted to see how it felt, Sirius, or is it because you're bent?"

Still no answer.

"Couldn't have James, so you -- "

"Shut up!"

"Not James? Some other boy? Don't say Peter." Remus felt himself smile a little, and knew this was Richard speaking, and hated Richard for a moment. "You still could, you know," he continued, quietly. "I can be anything you want. Do nearly anything. I know things you can't dream about, Sirius. That's why I'm here. That's why anyone you thought you'd be seeing tonight is here."

"I heard from a boy in Ravenclaw," Sirius said, dully.

"Yes."

"He doesn't know it's you."

"He doesn't know me very well, and he doesn't pay attention the way you do."

"He comes here and -- and does -- things with you."

"Fucks me," Remus supplied helpfully.

"Does he?"

"Not all do. He does, yes."

"What do the others do?"

"I don't think you really want an answer to that, Sirius."

"Moony..." Sirius left the name hanging there, but Remus was not about to oblige him. He took a deep breath. "Do you enjoy it?"

The thought had really never crossed his mind.

Enjoying it was for his clients. His job was to provide the enjoyment. He had orgasms, sometimes, which he supposed counted. Some parts were distasteful, a little, but couldn't be helped. Enjoy it? It wasn't really part of the equation, was it. But then he didn't really think Sirius was going to understand the subtle shadings of ethics that it took to be what he was, to do what he did.

"Yes," he lied, standing and re-corking the wine bottle. "Are you done asking me questions?"

"Yes," Sirius answered. "For now."

"Good, because you never answered mine."

Sirius bowed his head. "I thought if I -- just the once -- it would go away."

"What would?"

"Dreams and -- and -- things," Sirius stuttered. Remus had never, in all his born days, seen Sirius Black stutter.

"About men?"

Sirius nodded mutely.

"I don't think it's like the flu," Remus said gently. "It doesn't go away if you treat it."

"Do you have those...urges?"

"I suppose."

Sirius stood too; Remus had stayed at the little shelf where the wine was kept, hands still on the bottle, and now Sirius was behind him, smelling damp and masculine. It didn't matter, or shouldn't, since Remus had known men who both smelled better and knew what they were doing. But none of them had known him, and Remus the boy, who was a Prefect and loved books and was still nervous around people he fancied, felt something stir in the pit of his stomach.

"Can you show me?" Sirius asked, a hint of desperation in his voice. "Not -- not because of the pay but -- "

"Everything I do is because of the pay," Remus said sharply, trying to cut off the rising sensation inside him that his heart might hammer through his chest.

"But if I weren't paying you, if thing were different -- "

Sirius had put a hand on his hip, and it made Remus nervous. His thumb was making slow circles in the sensitive place just along his back, and he could feel Sirius' breath on his neck.

"If you weren't paying me, I wouldn't teach you," he said breathlessly, and felt Sirius stiffen with rejection. "No, Padfoot. I mean if you weren't paying me it would be just us together, equals. And I'm not sure you want that."

"Moony," Sirius said, voice low and thick. He tried to lean around him, to kiss him, but Remus pulled back out of instinct; kissing wasn't something he did very often. Sirius paused, and used the hand on his hip to lever him away from the shelf, slightly, so that they were almost facing each other, and leaned in again.

He might have known trick with his tongue and his body, ways to make a man or woman feel as if they were the only person in the world, but with Sirius kissing him he felt untutored and awkward -- he didn't know where to put his hands or whether he ought to simply let Sirius push his tongue into his mouth, but Sirius seemed intent on doing it anyway.

"Come back with me," Sirius said, around the third or fourth or possibly tenth kiss, Remus had lost count. "Don't stay here."

"There's a bed here."

"Don't stay here, Moony."

Remu studied his face, the expressive lips, high cheekbones, eyes that changed colour in different lights, from pale to deep blue.

"All right," he said, and Sirius dressed for the cold outside while Remus found his shoes and socks, put on a jumper and a coat over it, a thick coat he'd bought with money from what he did here, but here wasn't a part of the equation right now.

They walked through Hogsmeade quitely, breath puffing in the air, snow crunching and crackling underfoot. Sirius looked calmer than Remus felt, as they crept through the hallways of Hogwarts and up to the Gryffindor Tower.

"We can't do anything here," Remus said softly, as they entered the common room. "Not what we could have done in Hogsmeade."

"You could come sit with me on my bed," Sirius replied, "and tell me about it."

"About what?"

"This summer, and the weekends. You must have wanted to tell someone. It can't all have been roses and good times, can it?"

The other boys in their year were sleeping, but Sirius' bed was nearest the door, and Remus' came between his and James, so as long as they were quiet they didn't have to wake anyone. Sirius changed unself-consciously into his pyjamas, so Remus did too; they drew the curtains around the bed, and Sirius sat crosslegged, and rested his chin in his hands. He looked like he was twelve again, waiting to hear one of the stories James used to spin before lights out.

"Tell me," he said, and unaccountably, Remus began to cry.

It was stupid and childish and he kept crying because he was so ashamed of crying, and he didn't know why he was crying, because really no one thing had been so bad. It was just that suddenly all the loneliness and the lostness that came of being Remus here and Richard in the house in Hogsmeade was overwhelming. And then Sirius was kissing him again, all over to get rid of the tears, and he was terribly sniffly and red-eyed and he missed his mum and dad.

He leaned into Sirius' shoulder as the other boy held him and stroked his hair, and murmured reassurances, and then James was there -- he must have been sniffling too loudly -- and Sirius sent him away again thank god, and Sirius was wrapping the big quilt up around their heads and rolling them up in the bed. And it had been -- it had been never since he'd been in a bed with someone who just wrapped their arms around him and didn't expect anything and kissed him.

He slept so well that night, and in the morning changed his train ticket so that he could go home with the rest of the students, a week sooner.

Twenty Galleons was, after all, only twenty Galleons.

And every day there was Sirius, who kissed him, and maybe it was wrong but Sirius owned his body. He gave it to him, wholly and unashamedly, and that meant no one else ever had to own it, and Sirius loved him.

The mistress sat on her couch, fully clothed this time, and regarded the man seated across from her. It had been three -- four years? five? -- since he'd quit the business, a very lucrative business, because some other boy had found out and Richard had got-religion as the Muggles put it. Well, perhaps sixteen had been too young to teach him the trade, anyhow, but it wasn't as though he hadn't made her a pretty commission in his time.

Now he sat, head bowed, asking politely if she had an opening for him; he could use the money, and there had recently been some tragedy, she presumed in his family, and he wanted to escape for a little while. He was older, too old to look like a student anymore, but whores were hard to come by and men doubly so, and she knew that he already had a few tricks up his sleeve.

Of course, she said. Of course, Richard. Welcome back.

His smile as he accepted her hand didn't reach his eyes, but then at least his eyes, bloodshot as they were, were dry.