"If you're going to be insulting," Remus says, because medieval is only half a step up from primitive, "I'll have to ask you to keep out." Of his head. But he doesn't quite mind, watching with a vague sort of smile. Not yet relieved, but expectant. Above it his eyes are still sharp.

There's nothing ordinary about this. Even if it were as simple as a back injury. Wizarding afflictions rose to meet wizarding cures, he thinks, so tearing oneself apart every month passes for a chronic illness, a few days of care and rest and back to work, and splinched lungs were only a bit of excitement during lessons, easily restored. But there was nothing to be done about his mother's muggle heart when she fell ill, and it wasn't ordinary.

And this, particularly—he watches Charles drink from the vial from beyond the foot of the bed, wand still in hand, expecting to be relieved as soon as the contents do their work but also expecting some sort of explanation. Hoping for one, anyway.

“He must like you,” Remus says, dry and thoughtless. Less thoughtful on the whole, now. He’s no Occlumens, but he has the foundations of a decent one if he ever learned: compartmentalization, suppression, distance. The ability to think mostly about Quidditch and write a coherent essay about werewolves at the same time, or to focus on someone’s poorly-applied mascara and smile pleasantly while she complains about half-breeds. That sort of thing.

So when Charles said can’t, no doors slammed shut, no walls went up, and Remus didn’t go mute, but he is at least more present, more self-protective, intentionally attentive to things that don’t really matter.

He takes the sunglasses hanging from the neck of his jumpsuit, waves them once at Charles to make sure he knows where they are, and sets them on top of a bureau. He thinks, Your laundry will wrinkle, and, You should really cut your hair. Out loud he says, “Are you sure you should be mixing that with alcohol?” and moves closer to swipe the vial and sniff at the contents. He isn’t serious. Potions and liquor work their magic in different ways. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “What did you mean, you can’t?”

Remus thinks—no. He veers away from thinking about what precisely he's known, but he does understand, or come close. His pain stops. Never permanently, and in between full moons his joints still ache and his wounds struggle against healing spells, but the worst of it is confined to one night a month, a few minutes on either side of the night, and all he has to do to beat it is outlast it.

So he can only imagine not having an end, or the prospect of one, but imagining it is enough. He doesn't spare a moment to worry about Charles' lost power or lost identity or whatever is wrapped up in treating his telepathy; if Remus could give up his magic to change what he was, he would.

He caps the vial and sets it back on the nightstand.

"You don't have any with you," he says, to confirm. "Is it something you could—" Brew, almost, but he's learning. "—synthesize here?"

"I'm sure if you went mad with power someone would step in," Remus says mildly. Only half of it, the part where Charles turns villain, is a joke. If anyone tried it, Remus doubts it would go over well with the ship's non-mutant supernatural contingent.

So it's only Charles he's concerned about. His autonomy and agency and ability to exist in a way he can withstand, and fuck anyone who tries to decide for him what he should willingly suffer—

Projection is a funny thing.

"Is that why you're staying down here?" He folds his arms behind his back, hand around elbow, and shifts back from the bed without taking a step.