Chapter Text
remus agrees to meet sirius at a dingy muggle pub a few streets away from his apartment. it’s the first time sirius has sent owl post in as long as he can remember; he’s surprised he even knows how. remus’ letter back to him doesn’t have an opener, or even a signature. all it says is alright, leaving sirius with only his familiar scrawl of handwriting to know that his letter reached the right person.
when he arrives, remus is already there, and has been for a while, by the looks of it. if this is some kind of mind chess, sirius is at a loss for his next move. he flexes and unflexes his hands in the doorway, trying to summon some kind of motivation- the kind of motivation for a date, he realizes, as he searches for the tangible electricity in his bones- before an elderly man shoves past him with a mutter of don’t block the door like you own the place.
remus doesn’t look up when sirius approaches. he stares blankly at the back row of liquor bottles behind the bar and spins his half-drunk beer bottle slowly with his thumb and forefinger. it takes a lot more than watery beer to get remus even slightly tipsy; sirius knows this far too well, as a vivid memory of him chugging a bottle of firewhisky in seventh year flashes through his mind.
“why’d you choose the bar?” he says, because he can’t think of any other conversation other than how are you or i’m sorry and he’s not ready for either of those, not yet.
“i’m not staying long.”
remus offers no room for persuasion. sirius resists the urge to ask if he needs help paying the babysitter (assuming there is one, if remus found himself in a building with a lack of kindly neighbours) and decides to sit down before he condemns himself to an even shorter visit.
he orders a beer, wondering if something stronger would get him closer or farther to what he needs to ask, everything unsaid between them. it seems more and more distant the longer he mulls over the words weighing down his tongue, something untouchable, unreachable. a solid wall of stone and loneliness stands tall between their barstools, wearing itself in the form of the bags under remus’ eyes and the tremors in sirius’ hands.
he loves him, through the pub’s smell of muddy boots and cheap liquor. he wonders if he knows. (he wonders if that’s why the wall is there. to keep him from loving sirius back.)
beads of sweat slip down their beers, forming a ring on their paper coasters. sirius ponders his cowardice, unable to reach out to the man right beside him. remus doesn’t make a sound. it shouldn’t surprise him when he speaks first, but it still does.
“where were you, sirius?”
sirius swallows, the lump in his throat swelling. he pauses for a moment, as if temporary silence will make the question dissipate before his eyes. when he can’t avoid it any longer, he answers. “i can’t tell you that.”
“but you can show up to my apartment unannounced.”
there’s no question in his tone, no room for it. he used to do this when they were in school, too, staring daggers into sirius’ forehead from across the common room when he wasn’t telling him something. sirius wasn’t sure if it was for better or for worse situations, back then- a matter of secrets, who woke the wolf, to where he had been for three years. one and the same. trust and betrayal.
“remus, i-”
“did you think everything would go back to normal?” he asks, instead of did you think you could just kiss me like we know each other? sirius is almost relieved until he realizes the question he’s faced with.
“no,” he says, slowly, “no. i didn’t. i just thought that i-”
sirius comes up empty-handed when he thinks of how to end his sentence, and despite the pent up anger in remus’ eyes that is always there, lurking behind his irises, he says nothing. he gives him a chance to explain. the answer hangs over them, barely transparent, just out of reach. open to sirius to give.
“i wanted to see you.”
it’s all his vocal cords lend to him to give. it isn’t enough.
remus rises from his seat, tossing down a five pound note beside his unfinished beer bottle on the counter and flicks his coat collar upward, trudging out into the rain. sirius goes to chase after him but gets caught on his barstool, rummaging around in his pockets for change to leave behind.
“remus, wait!”
by the time he gets outside, remus is a silhouette under the murky evening sky, his holey coat and hair darkened by the absence of an umbrella. he didn’t bring one either, he notices, standing in the wet with only a thin leather jacket.
he’s slipping out of his grasp faster than he can count; with a hollow voice, one that barely carries, he calls out “moony, please” and hopes the odds aren’t against him for once in his life.
remus stops. sirius can see the vague turn of his shoulders from where he angles himself towards him, sensing his presence in front of the pub. sirius’ dog heart picks up with floppy-eared hope, that still doesn’t leave him with much more than his useless vocal chords.
“i’m sorry,” he says, finally, rain matting his hair to his forehead, rendering his leather jacket cold and clingy to his skin. he doesn’t know if remus can hear him over the cars driving through puddles, or the collar of his coat pulled up to his ears; but he stays still, a blurry haze through sirius’ eyes, standing out against the flickering street lamps.
he doesn’t know what made him start. maybe it was remus standing six feet away from him when they’re on the same street corner, maybe it was the way his heart heaves every time his scars catch the lighting. all he knows is that as soon as he starts, he doesn’t stop.
“i was never good at goodbyes,” the rainwater drips down his face like a pantomime of hidden grief, “to . . . to anyone. especially not to you. i didn’t know what i was supposed to do- i didn’t know what i was supposed to feel. i never know what to do except run away.”
maybe the haze of the night is impeding on his vision, or maybe remus is just magical like that; but when he’s done his impromptu spilling of the heart, remus is closer to him. so close that sirius can reach out and grab his coat flaps, if he wants to. and still not close enough.
“i’m sorry, remus. i should’ve called.” he’s compelled to say it to the sky, the stars, or remus’ worn-out shoes; but he says it to his face, to the silent abyss of his eyes, because that’s what he deserves.
there’s a long, heavy moment before remus replies. he doesn’t break eye contact, he doesn’t move any closer or farther away. he just stares, like he’s staring right through sirius’ soul, right into the caverns of his mind where everything he doesn’t have the words for are etched into the walls. he stares like he understands.
“you don’t have a phone.”
and there it is. everything unsaid, spilled right out onto the sidewalk in front of a dingy muggle pub. like the stones of the wall tumbling down.
sirius knows what he means. but he still doesn’t have an answer. “should’ve . . . should’ve found one.”
the moon, a sliver of a crescent, smiles at them from behind a cloud. the neon signs in the windows of the pub behind them flicker to life. remus’ face is softer behind the corners of his collar, ever so impassively hidden. like the wine-coloured drapes of his four poster, drawn shut save for the crack facing sirius’ bed.
“you cut your hair,” remus remarks, and it takes everything in him not to let out a sob. (because he noticed, because he cares to mention it, because this is the first thing he’s said to him that’s anything other than a means of escape.)
instead, he laughs, a bright, loud sound for only the open sky to hear. he doesn’t dwell on whether the wetness of his cheeks is rainwater or tears; they’re almost yelling, now, over the din. like old men who’ve known each other their whole lives, voices drowned out by rain and age. and it doesn’t matter if remus is twenty miles away or right in front of him, like he is now.
“yeah. yeah, i did.”
remus looks him over, deciding how he feels about it. sirius can see the cogs turning in his mind. he’s a mess and a half and yet remus still stands there, soaking wet, analyzing him like a painting in the louvre. he did the same thing when sirius started growing it out. it makes his stomach flip in a way that’s foreign to him.
“it looks good.”
“you like it?”
remus’ eyes rake over him again, submitting sirius to the honey-hazel brown scrutiny of familiarity. he’s searching for something he knows beneath a haircut and a worn leather jacket, neither of which seems to be enough. but he still says “yes” like he recognizes him, like this is seeing him on the platform after the summer, like walburga was the one who had given him this rugged, choppy pixie cut full of product instead of a cheap barber across the country.
it’s when he finally smiles at him that sirius truly starts to cry.
it starts again over tea; two mugs, the rickety dining table, and harry asleep in his bed. sirius finds out that remus does have a kindly neighbour- a sprightly woman a few years older than them who lives three doors down. she doesn’t question the presence of another man at remus’ back and smiles at them both when she refuses his pay.
“that’s a lovely boy you’ve got, remus,” she tuts cheerily, closing his hands with her own, “i’ll look after him anytime.”
the apartment smells vaguely of cinnamon and hot chocolate, the single lamp turned on behind them casting a warm glow on the bare walls. a towel hangs around sirius’ shoulders, his frigid hands grateful for the steaming mug between his fingers. remus had coerced him into wearing one of his jumpers, muttering something along the lines of if you get a cold, i’ll get a cold, and we’ve just run out of cough medicine .
there is something so intimate about the way that remus’ clothes still smell the same.
“do you have a flat?” he asks absently, looking into the abyss of his tea instead of the way sirius watches him.
he knows what he means. do you need to stay the night? he holds a yes quietly in his chest, within his ribcage, alongside his heart. he knows that if he stayed, it wouldn’t be because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
“yeah, i do. a few blocks east of here.”
remus nods into his tea. sirius can’t tell if his fingertips are tingling because they’re slowly thawing out, or because of his longing to reach out and touch. (to touch and touch and touch, everything he hadn’t felt in years; soft hair, slender hands, sharp jaw. everything, everything, like his bones were singing.)
he’s always breaking their silences. “remus.”
remus waves him off, all-knowing in his single syllable. “i’m still . . . deciding,” he takes a long sip of his tea, impartial to the burning, pondering things that should not be confined to his dining table alone, “whether or not i want to hear it.”
sirius smiles crookedly, watching the slant of remus’ eyebrows, the lines in his forehead. “you do want to hear it.” it fills him with palpable glee to know this. his glee is only heightened when remus doesn’t disagree.
“i know.” he goes quiet for a moment, his eyes flitting over sirius entirely to a spot on the wall. “but i have to decide if it’s worth it.”
“worth what?”
“getting you back.”
their eyes meet through the gentle steam of their mugs, bones singing to each other. calling out in a way that transcends this stark living room, in a world they both hold inside their hearts, where there is nothing such as death and money separating them. where they can be 24, clinging to schoolboy love, and no more than that.
“you’re getting me back either way, moony.” sirius says quietly, reaching across the table to take remus’ hand in his own, “if you want me.”
remus doesn’t pull away. “and what if i asked you to stay, then?” he glances down at their hands, the way that they don’t so much as hold each other more than they simply fit together, like they were always meant to be. “would it be any different?”
“no.” sirius insists, absolute. professing a truth they both knew, but needed to hear out loud. “never again, remus. i promise.”
there is something to be said about love and trust when remus looks up at him again; sirius, in his jumper, sitting at his kitchen table, drinking tea he doesn’t even like because remus made it for him. and he knows, then, that it’ll be worth it, someday. worth hearing why he left and why he came back again.
their trust was an undiscussed thing between them, hanging in the air at night; when they wrapped themselves up in each other and remus let his hand linger on sirius’ chest and he would whisper here, right here. this is where i love you and this is where i will stay to the stars above their rooftop, and sirius would know it without saying because that’s just the way they were.
and it never broke, not even when it wavered, like a squirrel running across a telephone line; because a thing such as grief and impulsiveness doesn’t hinder the way you love someone, not when they’re the only thing you have. not when they’re the only thing you want.
“alright,” remus says, and sirius stays.