Work Text:
Sirius decided to leave the Auror Division in 1983.
He never told anyone, but it happened on the 14th of June. They'd done a raid on the Throckmorton place, run into some decidedly nasty Death Eater stragglers they hadn't been expecting, and by the time he got home it was three hours after he was usually back and he looked like he'd been through the wars—he'd not had time to go to Mungo's to see about the cut across his face which was still sluggishly bleeding (some curse that prevented scab formation?), and there was a wicked bruise down his right side.
That was all bearable, though. He'd definitely had worse. The reason he left was Remus.
He was waiting for him—had positioned a chair exactly halfway between the living room and the front door so he could see the fireplace and the door at the same time. Sirius always took the Floo home, but—but when aurors came to announce someone had died, they always used the door, even if they knew the person they were giving condolences to. When he put two and two together he felt his stomach drop out from under him and the back of his throat burn.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice thick. "I'm fine, everyone's fine, we just—there were a whole cell of Death Eaters hiding out at the Throckmorton estate and—"
Remus hadn't moved since he'd emerged from the fireplace. He looked exhausted, despite the fact that it had only just gone ten, and his fingernails were bloody and ragged, as if he'd kept biting them when there was nothing left. He looked like it was the night after the full moon. He looked like they were still in the middle of a war, even though the war had been over for two whole years. Not that you could tell from the way Sirius's blood finally rolled down to his chin and dripped onto the carpet.
That was the problem, wasn't it? The war hadn't ended for them.
"I'm sorry," he said again, wiping at his face with his filthy sleeve and probably causing at least three different infections. "I had no idea it would all go so wrong." If Remus had been sitting on the sofa he would have sat down next to him and try to make up for the horrid evening Remus must have had, but Remus had moved one of the dining chairs to keep vigil on, so he just stood there awkwardly, no longer sure what to do with his hands. He'd never been so… aware that he had hands. He put them in his pockets.
"Have you been to Mungo's?" Remus said at last. Sirius shook his head—Moody had told him to go get it looked at, but he had wanted to go home first, make sure Remus knew he was alright.
Remus put his shoes on and offered him the floo powder first. He still hadn't touched him and Sirius felt it like the ache in his side.
They bypassed the line for the Welcome Witch and headed straight for the fourth floor, because that was who they were: Sirius couldn't imagine being one of the people who stood in the reception area, looking nervous and uncertain, as if they'd never been to a hospital before. Technically, there was a time when Sirius had never been to a hospital before, but it felt like a thousand years ago. (In reality, it was seven.)
He knew several healers on the spell damage ward by name, so he was able to greet Ishida as she saw them come in, gestured to an empty bed and said she'd be with them in a moment.
He hissed as he jostled something getting onto the bed and Remus looked away.
"Are you angry?" Sirius asked as they waited for Ishida to return.
"No," Remus said, and Sirius didn't think he was lying—but he also still wouldn't look at him.
Before he could ask more questions, Ishida returned, motioning for him to strip to his underwear so she could inspect the damage. He preferred Ishida to Braddock (and how ridiculous was it that he had preferred healers in the spell damage ward?) and said so, making Ishida smile as she applied some pungent ointment to his side.
"When did you get this?" she asked, pointing at the gash on his face.
"Three hours ago maybe?" he said. "As you can imagine, it was a bit of a blur."
"This was work, I assume, and not some punch-up in Knockturn Alley," she said, prodding it gently with her wand and murmuring something.
"Yeah, so it's probably Dark, if that helps? I don't know anything else."
"Is it hot? Itchy? Does it feel different from a cut with a non-magical knife?"
"I hate that I have been cut with enough knives to tell you that there's a weird kind of ache about it that's not usually there? Is that just face wounds or something?"
Ishida didn't say anything, but the way she hummed was just as effective at communicating bad news.
"I'd like to keep you here overnight and try some things—obviously it's not dire right now, but we'd ideally want to sort it out before it gets infected."
Sirius looked to Remus.
"You don't need my permission," Remus said, as if that was what Sirius was asking. It had been twelve years and Sirius still couldn't read Remus when he wanted to hide his feelings—he was impossible to play cards with, and even more impossible to judge at times like this. "What good would it do you to go home if you still need medical attention?"
"It might do you good," Sirius said, thinking of the times during the war when Remus had returned days later than he should have; how he had wanted to never let Remus out of his sight again, had made excuses to touch him all the time.
Remus shook his head. "I can go home and get your things, though—pyjamas, the book on your side of the bed, toiletries, that kind of thing." He had been staring at the bed the whole time, never meeting Sirius's eyes, and Sirius almost refused to stay just so he could get Remus to explain himself.
"Thanks," he said instead.
Visiting hours were long over by the time Remus returned with a bag, so he had gone as quickly as he came. One of the potions Sirius had drunk made him drowsy, and he spent the night trapped in dreams he couldn't remember once he woke except that they had been loud and terrifying and inevitable.
When he woke, his pyjamas damp with sweat, Remus was sitting by his bedside working on a translation job. He looked better than he had last night—which meant he had slept, which was something, Sirius thought.
By the time Sirius had finished breakfast (Remus had already bought the coffee and pastry, saving him from the hospital food), Remus had begun to meet his eyes, which was progress, but he still hadn't touched him since before he'd left for work. Ishida was satisfied enough with his progress that she discharged him, although he was a little worried she would find out where he lived solely to hex him if he didn't take all the potions on time. She had reduced the bruising down his side to a slightly less angry rainbow, and the cut on his face had finally scabbed over. At least now he looked like he’d been in a punch-up a week ago, not five minutes ago.
Sirius made it all the way to the living room before he folded. Remus had made conversation—had even called him a tosser, which was definitely the most affectionate he'd been in the last twenty-four hours—but Sirius couldn't deal with the way Remus was holding himself. He was too still, too careful, and never, ever in physical contact with him.
It wasn't even the amount of time—they'd gone for plenty longer without seeing each other. Hell, they'd gone for longer not knowing if the other one was alive. It was the way they were both definitely alive and in the same room and Remus still wouldn't touch him that terrified him.
"I'm sorry," he said, sitting on the sofa and trying to make himself as small as possible, looking at his hands. "I didn't have any—I—" He ran a hand through his hair and pulled, hoping the pain would at least concentrate his thoughts into a single sentence. "I didn't know the time, and by the time I did I couldn't make a patronus—" What kind of idiot made an emergency communication method predicated on being able to summon both a happy memory and a decent amount of magical power? Ugh, Dumbledore. "Please let me fix this."
Remus sat beside him on the sofa and finally, finally took his hand, disentangling it from his hair and kissing his knuckles. They sat in silence for—Sirius wasn't sure, he was a little high from whatever Ishida had given him, probably, and time seemed to bend and stretch in odd ways. At last Remus spoke.
"There's nothing to be sorry for. I'm sorry—I know none of it was your fault, and you came home first when you probably should have gone to Mungo's, and there was absolutely nothing you could have done. I just—I'm—" He broke off, staring into the unlit grate, but his thumb was making small circles against Sirius's skin, a steady reassurance. "There isn't an end," he said suddenly. "During the war at least we could say it was only until the war was over, but now it is and—what changed?"
Nothing. Sirius didn't need to say it out loud.
“At least during the war I could do something,” Remus said, quieter now. “You and James can do something useful, while I’m stuck translating instruction pamphlets for doxy spray. Nothing like looking up the translation for ‘corrosive’ while you wait to find out whether your boyfriend’s been murdered to really bring that one home.”
The worst part was that Sirius couldn’t even say anything to that. He had already told Remus he didn’t need to be “useful”, that his existence was as “useful” as he needed to be. He’d tried to prove Remus’s usefulness by kissing him until they were both out of breath and trying to thank him more often for doing the washing up or making tea.
When Remus had been jobless for months and made noises about moving out because he couldn’t afford to pay Sirius rent, Sirius had tried to convince him that it was ridiculous for Remus to think that he owed Sirius anything. Sirius could choose to not work a day in his life and he’d be fine because he was the last left of a terrible bloodline that had grown rich off the backs of people they despised. Why did Remus think Sirius was more worthy of shelter than he was, when Remus was a good man from a good family?
None of it had worked. It wasn’t really about money, anyway.
“One day you’re going to go to work and you’re not going to come back and I don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t know how to deal with that just… stretching into the future forever.”
“We’re both going to die at some point,” Sirius pointed out, and Remus didn’t even acknowledge him. Sirius deserved that.
“I don’t know how I’d keep going without you and I’m terrified,” Remus said, so quietly Sirius had to lean closer to hear him.
There it was. That was the reason Remus hadn’t touched him for twenty-four hours — and also the reason Remus was touching him now, even though he kept going to use that hand for something else and then remembering he could not possibly let go of Sirius.
There was nothing useful Sirius could say, so he kissed him instead, trying to communicate his feelings through the notoriously imprecise and opaque language of bodies moving against bodies.
Later, when he was curled up against Remus and they were both close to sleep, he whispered into Remus’s hair, “I don’t know how I’d keep going either.”
A month later, Sirius left the Auror Division. “I’m embracing my destiny as the local homosexual layabout with expensive tastes and no work ethic,” he said when asked about it. When Remus pointed out that he had been a homosexual layabout with expensive tastes and no work ethic for years already, Sirius said that now that they’d finished catching Death Eaters, being an auror was just like being a policeman, and he couldn’t bear to be an instrument of state violence like that.
Sirius wasn’t sure Remus believed him, but he also never again had to wait in sight of the fireplace and the door, so that was good enough for him.