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“Did I ever tell you,” Remus begins with the question one morning while setting down a steaming mug of black coffee in front of Sirius beside his empty breakfast plate, “about Neville Longbottom’s boggart?”
Sirius hums noncommittally from his place at the kitchen table as he scribbles another answer into the Daily Prophet’s crossword puzzle boxes, and Remus turns back toward the counter to take his own teacup and saucer before sitting down across from him. He places his chin on his palm and his elbow on the table, and just watches Sirius in this fleeting moment of domestic bliss— Sirius sitting there in his bathrobe and slippers with his morning scruff and salt-streaked hair— ever grateful to have the person he’d once loved so fiercely back in his life, even if things between them now are tentative and slow moving.
It’s a chilly spring morning outside of Grimmauld Place but inside it’s cozy, and Sirius’s frigid disposition melts away more and more with each day that passes, blooming like the pink cherry blossom buds on the trees that line the street. Despite his persistence to get out of this bleak home that harbours so many terrible memories for him, Sirius has been… happier lately, noticeably more content with Remus here for good.
They’ve even taken to sleeping in the same bed again, just as they did as young men, before the world went to shit and they both lost everything. Back then, Sirius used to be the one to curl up protectively behind Remus with a hand on his waist and a kiss to his temple after a frenzied romp in the sack with the heady smell of sweat, cigarettes, and cologne still clinging to his skin. These days, it’s Remus who’s playing the role of big spoon, never mind that he’s still the smaller of the two. Even so, Sirius made love to him for the first time in fourteen years last night, and Remus is feeling rather soft when he asks the silly question, hoping to earn a bit of the praise he so desperately longed for when they were boys.
It hadn’t been anything like it used to be— not hot and sweaty and passionate, but clumsy and embarrassing for the both of them. They used to set each other off over and over again with their hands and mouths and more, both of them young and virile, but this time it was slow and fumbling, more awkward than their first time, and even though they’d both finished much sooner than they would’ve liked (likely due to them both being older and touch-starved and perhaps more than a little bit tipsy on the wine from Orion Black’s cellar), Remus is overjoyed— it’s a move in the right direction to mending the bits of the once solid relationship that lie at their feet like shards of broken glass. One misstep on the way to get your wand and you’re left hurt and bleeding again, and unfortunately a quick Reparo cannot mend their tragic past.
“What about it?” Sirius asks, setting his quill down and reaching for the mug. He blows the steam from the drink and takes a small sip with his eyes closed, eyelashes long and dark against the highs of his cheekbones, and Remus finds it rather funny, the way the whiskers above his lip dip into the coffee and come back wet. Sirius licks them clean, unknowingly making Remus smile before he goes on.
“My first day teaching at Hogwarts, my very first Defence lesson was on boggarts. I’d gotten into a bit of a tiff with Snape earlier that morning, you know, the whole don’t eat any of the students while sobbing over your ex-boyfriend bit.” Sirius chuckles quietly at this and Remus pauses here to take a sip of his tea as he admires him, crossing one leg over the opposite knee.
“Always was a complete and utter greasy git, that Snivellus,” Sirius says with a twinkle in his grey eyes. “Sorry about that, Moony.”
Remus waves the apology off. “It’s fine darling, water under the bridge.”
“Anyway, you were saying? Boggarts?”
“Ah, yes.” He sets his cup down and continues his story. “So I bring the kids into the staff room for some hands on experience and Snape is there, swishing about like a giant man-bat. He makes a nasty remark to Neville, and the way Neville flinches back from him is so very telling to me.”
“Smart kid. I’d cringe away from that huge beak of a nose too if I were him. Might put an eye out.”
“Sirius, you’re terrible!” Remus laughs, swatting Sirius’s hand playfully where it rests on the table.
“Terribly funny. Besides, you just called him a ‘giant man-bat’!”
“Yes, well. Anyway , imagine my delight when young Neville whispers to me in this tiny, trembling voice that the thing he’s most afraid of is none other than Professor Snape himself. And of course, as you’re well aware, Neville’s grandmother looks after him.”
Sirius perks up at this, back straight and eyebrows raised. “Oh?” he asks curiously. “And whatever did my marvelous, mischievous Moony do?”
Remus snickers with his mouth on the rim of his cup, pressing his lips together in a tight smile before he answers.
“I had him imagine Severus Snape in our dear Madam Longbottom’s clothes, naturally. Red handbag, vulture hat, and all.”
“You didn’t!” Sirius exclaims, rattling the dishes when he slaps his hand on the table and lets out a long howl of a laugh. He’s absolutely delighted, whooping and crowing like he used to when they were all back in school and had just successfully pulled off a top notch prank. The joy on Sirius’s face suits him well, settles into all of the little lines on his face and makes him glow brightly, and Remus feels his heart swell and swoon with adoration. “Oh Remus, you devil. Snape in drag. Come here, would you?”
Remus sets his cup down again and rises from his chair. He steps over to Sirius and looks down at him fondly, reaching to touch a lock of his messy morning hair. Sirius pats his thigh and Remus carefully straddles his lap with all the grace of a knobby-kneed thirty-something year old man while wrapping his arms around Sirius’s neck, and Sirius rests his hands on the bones of Remus’s skinny hips.
“I missed you,” Sirius mumbles, moving one hand up Remus’s back, caressing between his shoulder blades with gentle fingers. “I do miss you.”
“I’m here, darling,” Remus says softly, “and you’re here.”
“Everything is different now. We’re different.”
“You think so?” Remus asks, raising an eyebrow. He rakes Sirius’s hair back from his face, then cups his bearded jaw in his hands as he looks him square in the eye. “Sure, some things have changed,” he says and Sirius promptly snorts, so he rolls his eyes and corrects himself. “Fine, a lot has changed. But I believe I just proved I’m still quite the same despite everything that’s happened. And that beautiful laugh you gave me showed me you are, as well.”
Sirius hums again, tipping his head back to look up at the man on his lap. “I suppose,” he agrees with a slight shrug.
Remus leans down a bit, touching his forehead to Sirius’s. “Besides,” he says, “I’m just as mad about you now as I was back then, you know.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” Remus whispers to him. “And I’m quite sure I always will be.”
“Me too,” Sirius whispers back, pulling Remus in close to himself. “You really are the same little troublemaker I fell in love with.”
“You’re one to talk, fugitive,” Remus says teasingly, but Sirius simply shrugs in response with a small smile tugging up the corners of his lips before pulling Remus down by the lapels of his pyjama shirt for a soft, lingering kiss. Remus thinks to himself, there in the kitchen with Sirius’s mouth on his and his fingers creeping beneath the hem of his shirt, what a blessing it is to live in the sunlight of that contagious smile once again.
They’ve been given a second chance and everything might not be perfect, but they’re both still the same old dogs and Remus won’t let him go again.