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He’d apparated but he didn’t have the strength to make it in one go. Instead he had travelled a few miles at a time, stumbling in and out of existence, slipping through the air, from one thickly hedged lane to another, across fields, across forests, across rivers. The moon had just risen as he had appeared in some field in Oxfordshire, and the sight of it, so very nearly full, sent a shock to his stomach like mangled spellwork turning his guts to liquid. It had been hard to breathe. He had stood for some moments watching the stars move incrementally over the sky, enough weak light to make out the treeline black against the sky. And then he turned and was gone.
And now the dark was cracking like an eggshell around him, splintering at the seams, and thin fingers of pale, clear light were reaching up from the east. He was cold and hungry and tired, and his sense of self had withdrawn to his chest, small and weak, his limbs just dead weight. In front of him was Remus’s door, red and flaking and faded, standing very solemn and secured in its decades old hinges.
He remembered the door. He thought that the last time he had been here, he had been laughing viciously and drunk, the latter days of the war. He couldn’t remember what he had said to Remus then, but it couldn’t have been good. He remembered the door.
And here he was again.
He knocked. It felt like a very long time before he could hear any signs of life, the cautious dropping noises of Remus coming down the stairs.
Remus opened the door and said nothing, just looking Sirius over, with that awful, guarded expression that Sirius could remember him wearing back in the day, whenever Sirius had thrown an arm over his shoulders.
“Dumbledore told me you were coming,” Remus said eventually, stepping back to let Sirius in.
It was like seeing in double vision. Remus was here, careworn and guarded, but as he moved into the kitchen Sirius could see for a moment Remus leaving the Gryffindor Common Room that last time, looking back once twice three times and then never again. Remus was here, flicking his wand casually at the kettle, and turning his heel to face Sirius on the click, but all Sirius could see was Remus, in the Shack, not quite yet believing, not quite seeing—
“Remus—” he began. Then stopped. Remus was watching him. Remus was moving towards him. Remus was holding a hand out for his coat. Remus—
“Sit down,” Remus said. Sirius couldn’t tell if it was affectionate or exasperated or impatient or frustrated or indifferent. He had always hated that Remus could be inscrutable to him. He never felt like he was inscrutable to Remus.
No, he felt awfully transparent, watching Remus’s shoulders as he hung up his coat.
The kettle screamed and Sirius jumped, thankful that Remus was still turned away from him; he was so altered. So odd, to watch Remus moving around in his kitchen, in a life Sirius knew almost nothing about. The distance between them felt wobbly and yet distinct.
Watching Remus’s spidery, blue veined hands clasping his teacup, he felt faint, forgotten stirrings of desire in his stomach, red and aching and cringing up his spine, a terrible thing, a weak, pathetic thing clinging to the lip of a great void, not enough strength to pull itself up and into the sunlight, not enough courage to let go.
“Remus—“ His hands were shaking and convulsing against the cup.
The expression on Remus’s face might have been kind or it might not have been. Sirius thought, abruptly, that he wanted Remus to be kind. He wanted Remus to be kind to him.
They had never been kind to each other, he knew this now, though he’d never seen it before; they had taken what they wanted without really considering the full effect of it. He remembered lying beside Remus unclothed on a morning after the full moon, on bare boards, laughing his head off at something; Remus had laughed too, but Sirius had never considered whether or not he would.
And now it seemed too late to start. Remus was so distinct from him now.
“You’ll spill it,” Remus said on a sigh, easing Sirius’s fingers from the cup. He was looking at Sirius carefully, in a considering sort of way, with his brows pulled together. Sirius had not seen this look in years, had almost forgotten it. Now it made him ache strangely.
The sun was rising smoothly and its light came seeking for them through the window above the kitchen sink. It made Remus look younger, nearer to how Sirius remembered, though he was skinnier than he had been even that first year after Hogwarts. The light spread across the table and glinted in Remus’s eyes.
“Do you want something to eat?” Remus asked, still in that careful, removed voice.
“Fuck yes.” He surprised himself with his own vehemence. He was afraid instantly that it might break the fragility of the air. Perhaps it did, but Remus grinned at him suddenly and rose.
It wasn’t until he had reached the stove that Sirius found it within himself to say slowly. “Remus… I am sorry, for thinking it was you.” He sounded like a child; some distant part of himself was disgusted.
Such a small thing, after all these years. How strange.
“I know,” Remus said without turning to face him. “I know, Sirius.”
Perhaps he even did. The light had reached his side of the table and warmth seeped into his jaw. He felt listless and uncertain. Remus was gripping the kitchen counter, hard. Sirius could remember, in a flash of oddly vivid memory, how white his knuckles looked when he grasped Sirius’s arm.
What were they going to do with themselves? The empty space of the day ahead stretched out ahead of him, absolute. He ought to be used to blank space by now, he thought to himself, after everything, but this was different somehow. He ought to know how to fill it, but he didn’t.
It frightened him. He remembered being able to pretend that nothing frightened him. He remembered being able to believe this.
“Drink your tea,” Remus said. He was peeling strips of bacon from the packet and putting them in the pan. Sirius had not had bacon for over a decade. It smelt odd.
“Remus—“
But as Remus turned to face him, he realised that he still did not know what it was that he wanted to say.
He took a large gulp of tea. The bacon sizzled and the stink of it pressed into his nostrils.
“It’s going to be a lovely day,” Remus said carefully, looking at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes,” he agreed.