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Remus still isn’t quite sure exactly what happened that night.
The only thing he remembers clearly is waking up aching and alone on the floor of the Forbidden Forest, and knowing, with a certainty he can’t place, that Peter is long gone. It’s barely a relief when Dumbledore tells him that Sirius too is gone. He’s safe, for now, and in hiding.
Remus opens his mouth, but before he can even ask, Dumbledore says kindly, “I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. But he’ll find you again once you’re ready.”
And in typical Dumbledore fashion, he doesn’t elaborate. The headmaster simply accepts Remus’s resignation, advises him not to go hunting after Peter alone, and—Remus later discovers—silently transfers a generous severance bonus into Remus’s Gringotts vault. The old man is downright infuriating sometimes, but after everything that’s happened, Remus can’t even find the energy to be angry.
The best lodging Remus can find on such short notice is a decrepit little caretaker's cottage on the edge of a campground in the Forest of Dean. The shingles on the roof are crumbling, there is no heating or cooling, and every metal fixture in the place is caked with concerning rings of rust. The only good thing about it is that there isn’t a single other soul around. The campground is a ghost town in the summers, filling up only as the brilliant autumn foliage comes in, by which time, Remus hopes, he will have long moved on.
It’s not a guarantee. Remus is terrible at moving on. A single night in the Shrieking Shack has been enough to undo thirteen years’ worth of it.
Just a single night, and now his memories, which he’d finally managed to arrange into something he thought maybe he could live with, are unspooling and gathering on the floor again like a tangled mess of string. He’s spent most of his time since that night staring into the mess, wondering how in the world he’ll ever make sense of it again now that he knows Sirius is innocent.
His memories are not the only thing that’s a mess, either. The tiny kitchen in the cottage is littered with half-eaten sandwiches and cold cups of tea. The area around his bed is scattered with dirty socks. And most unbearably, the top of his desk is overflowing with discarded bits of parchment, half-written letters to Sirius.
There are only three rooms in the cottage, and, today, just like every other day, he wanders back and forth between them like a restless ghost. He sleeps fitfully until noon, then gets up to make tea. While he waits for the water to boil, he sits at his desk, unfurls a clean sheet of parchment, and picks up a quill. Eventually, the kettle in the kitchen whistles, but by then, it’s been long forgotten.
Sirius, he writes. There’s a long pause as he holds his quill poised above the parchment. “Sirius, my love,” he murmurs aloud, trying out the old words to hear how they sound. It’s been thirteen years, but they don’t sound wrong. He’s waited too long to write them, though, and so a drop of ink has collected and fallen from the tip of his quill. The ink spreads across the parchment until it becomes an ugly blot, and Remus crumples up the page and tries again.
I’m sorry I didn’t insist on a trial, he writes. I’m sorry I didn’t search harder for the truth.
He writes and writes, the quill scratching madly as his excuses start to spill out in dark ink onto the stark white page.
Remus doesn’t like to think back to that time. After James and Lily died, black banners had descended over his vision like drawn curtains. He would lie down for a nap and sleep for days. He groped his way through the world with fetal blindness, surviving only because McGonagall would arrive on his doorstep with groceries every now and then, concern and pity on her stern face. But whether Remus’s eyes were open or closed, he saw nothing but James, leading them in foot races through the Hogwarts courtyards, in late-night jaunts to the kitchens, in mad gallops through soft beds of moss and cold streams. In his infectious energy and boundless joy, James had rallied the four of them like troops, with that easy crooked smile that would start off on his face and somehow end up on everyone else’s, too. But those crooked smiles had faded in the strain of war, and one day, someone in their group had woken up faithless and would never smile with James again.
Remus writes, I wish I never believed it was you.
In his blindness, Remus never thought to question Peter, sweet and eager and easy to please. When the photograph of Peter’s finger appeared in the papers underneath the headline PRESUMED DEAD, Remus cried and cried. But he didn’t check into his affairs. He didn’t search his flat.
And he never tried to visit Azkaban, either, because by the time Remus had begun to regain his sight, Sirius had been there for so long that there was surely nothing left of him to see.
I’m sorry I don’t have any of your old things anymore. I just couldn’t stand holding onto them. Your jumpers still smelled like you.
His excuses look so incredibly weak, inked onto parchment like this. He crumples up the page and starts over yet again.
You deserved better than me, he writes.
Outside the cottage, there’s a sudden whooshing sound that pricks the attention of Remus’s sensitive ears. This is unusual; there hasn’t been anything but ambient noise from the surrounding forest for weeks. He puts down his quill and listens more closely. Another whoosh, and this time, it sounds a bit like the fluttering of enormous wings.
Heart pounding, Remus races to the front door and yanks it open. There he is: Sirius, standing on thin legs, wrapped in the scraps of a ragged Azkaban uniform, with his face nearly hidden by his wild and matted hair. There have been many times since that night when Remus wished he would show up here, but now that he has, Remus doesn’t quite know what to do.
“My love,” Sirius says without preface. Despite his wretched appearance, he’s grinning and holding up what looks like a large silver lighter in one hand. “Don’t deny it, Moony—I heard you say it just now. You called me ‘my love.’”
Remus gapes. “How did you hear that?”
Sirius seems to take this as encouragement to come a few steps closer. “Through this,” he says, tossing the lighter to Remus. “Dumbledore sent it to me. He wrote that it was too risky to reveal your location through owl post, but this would help me find you, once you were ready to be found.”
Remus blinks in bewilderment as he turns the thing over in his hands, the metal still warm from Sirius’s touch. He looks over at Buckbeak, whose long talons are scraping deep furrows into his flower beds. “You brought the hippogriff here, Padfoot? Don’t you think the neighbors might ask questions?”
Sirius glances around. “This place looks pretty abandoned to me. I reckon we can just throw a good Disillusionment Charm on him and set him loose in the woods to hunt for his supper.”
A quick Homenum Revelio confirms that there is nobody else nearby, and Remus relaxes a tiny bit. They stare at each other until Remus realizes that Sirius is waiting to be invited in. “You must be hungry,” he says numbly. The words sound small, and laughably simple, but Sirius looks relieved. He nods.
They find their way into the kitchen and Sirius takes a seat, watching as Remus putters around the room with clumsy hands. Sirius looks odd and out of place at the kitchen table. He's loomed larger than life in Remus’s head for so long that it now feels impossible that he’s actually here, inside the house. It would’ve been easier for Remus to picture the Queen of England herself coming around for tea.
Somehow, though, Remus manages to prepare something edible for supper. As they eat, Sirius’s tangled hair falls forward, and Remus has to resist the urge to reach out and rake it back so that he can see more of his face. His heart hurts when Sirius inhales his food like he hasn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks.
While Sirius takes a much-needed shower, Remus cleans all of the half-written letters off of his desk and throws them away, burying them deep in the rubbish bin where they won’t be found. He doesn’t need them anymore, not with Sirius right here in front of him. Tonight, he’ll say everything that he didn’t have time to say that night in the Shrieking Shack. He just hopes he’ll be better at speaking the right words than he’s been at writing them.
When Sirius pokes his head out from the bathroom in a cloud of water vapor, he’s wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. Clean, he looks more like the man Remus remembers, if much, much thinner. “Any chance I can borrow some clothes?” he calls out. “I’m getting a bit tired of wearing this Azkaban uniform, you know.”
Remus doesn’t have much in his ragged wardrobe, but he takes the time to pick out some trousers and a black shirt that he thinks will suit Sirius. He hurries to hand them over, though, and averts his eyes quickly once he does. He can almost count each of Sirius’s ribs, and it’s too painful to remember a time when he wanted nothing more than to stare at his body for hours.
It was midsummer, and a lull in Order business meant they could have a few precious days all to themselves. James and Lily were wrapped up in each other, as newlyweds tend to be, and Peter was keeping a respectful distance, which left Remus and Sirius to enjoy each other’s company alone, quite possibly for the first time in their lives.
They flew the motorbike to the beach and spent the day baking under the sun, wearing only their swim trunks. Remus made it a point to apply sunscreen every two hours and managed to avoid the harsh red burn that sometimes snuck up on him in the summer. Sirius was only too eager to help him rub the lotion into his harder-to-reach spots, a rare excuse to touch him intimately in public. And so Remus, for his part, pretended that most of the spots on his body were too hard to reach, even the ones he could’ve easily managed alone with just the smallest stretch.
But Sirius was lazier about sunscreen, so by the time they returned to their flat in the evening and showered the sand out of their hair, his skin had browned to a glazy toffee color. Remus was lounging on the couch when Sirius emerged from the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around his hips. Although Sirius wandered around the flat shirtless at least half the time in the sweltering summer heat, tonight, Remus just couldn’t look away. The suntan had deepened the lines that carved his arms and shoulders into slim ropes of young muscle, modest but strong. Upon his chest, between two small, perfect pink nipples, was a sparse smattering of hair. Remus felt the urge to grab him by the waist and bury his nose right into it.
His staring did not go unnoticed by Sirius, who sauntered across the room towards him with a smirk, halting just out of arm’s reach, one hand still holding the towel up. “You alright?” he teased.
“Yes, fine, thank you.”
“Then what are you looking at?” he demanded.
“You,” Remus breathed.
“Can’t get enough?”
“No, suppose not,” Remus murmured honestly.
Sirius’s smirk softened into something a little more tender. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right, Moony? You’ll have the rest of your life to look at me. You don’t have to squeeze it all into tonight.”
Maybe I don’t, but maybe I do, Remus thought to himself. He was filled with terror these days, a nondescript sort of terror directed at nothing in particular but emanating out to everything at once. He knew that the moments he had now, the moments that made him so happy, wouldn’t last forever: These languid summer days. The temporary peace that reigned before the Order would inevitably call on them again. And—most of all—this dear, dear boy, standing naked here in front of him, looking still too young to bear the responsibility of being a man. Time was racing forward and moving on too quickly, each moment dying before Remus could manage to live it out properly. There was never quite enough time in the middle of a war, and Remus worried that these moments might slip through his fingers long before he was ready to let them go.
He wished they still had that camera from their Hogwarts days, but it was with James and Lily now. He wanted to take a photo memorializing Sirius for eternity just like this, so young and carefree and lovely. It was the only way it could last forever. The thing was, Sirius would only scoff at this kind of sentiment. Remus knew him well enough to know that Sirius didn’t fear the passage of time, that he couldn’t imagine himself growing old, that he never thought about death. He was too busy living. Even back when they had the camera, it was rare to catch a photo of him, because he would never stand still long enough for anyone to take one.
Sure enough, Sirius was already on the move again. He strode towards Remus, tugged him to his feet, and gathered him into his warm brown arms. “Bedtime,” he declared. “Join me, won’t you?”
They stumbled together down the hall towards their bedroom in a tangle of limbs, and Sirius’s towel was dropped somewhere along the way.
“What’s the matter, Moony? Not your taste anymore?” Out of the corner of his eye, Remus can see Sirius gesturing up and down at his bare chest, a wry smile on his face.
Oh, blast it. The last of the lovely memory fades in front of his vision, replaced by a humiliating certainty that Sirius knows exactly what he’s remembering and is remembering the same thing, in some form or another, himself.
Without answering him, Remus turns away and heads straight for the liquor cabinet in the living room. “I need a glass of firewhiskey,” he says flatly. “And if you want to join me, Padfoot, you’ll need to put on some clothes first.”
By the time Remus collapses into the armchair with an extremely generous pour in his highball glass, Sirius is dressed and taking a seat across from him on the couch. Remus slides a second glass over to him and then leaves the rest of the bottle on the coffee table, within arm’s reach of the both of them. He has a feeling they’re going to need it.
“So,” he opens somewhat awkwardly. “Are you sure it’s safe? For you to be here?”
Sirius takes a long sip of liquor and grimaces as it burns. It seems his throat is rather tender after thirteen years without drink. “As long as you don't turn me in,” he says dryly. “Dumbledore says Kingsley's in charge of my case and he's got the Ministry chasing false leads. They think I'm headed south for the French Riviera. And they don't know I've got a hippogriff.”
“Good, good,” Remus mutters. They fall into a stilted silence while Remus considers how he wants to begin to say the things he needs to say. When he speaks up again, his voice is smaller than he would’ve liked. He grips his fingers tightly against the curve of his glass to keep them from shaking. “Look, Padfoot, I think it goes without saying, but—I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out. About the Fidelius, and Wormtail being the traitor.”
Sirius’s face twists in anger at the mention of Peter’s name. “How could you have figured it out?” he says. “That rat was three steps ahead of us the whole time. He fooled us all.”
Remus lets out a heavy sigh. “I know. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but it makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? That if the Death Eaters applied pressure to each of us, he would be the one to break? Even back at school, he never did like a fight.”
Sirius’s scowl deepens. “Well, I guess I missed that little insight, then, didn’t I?” he says bitterly. “You should’ve been in charge of choosing the Secret Keeper, not me. You would’ve known better than to trust him.”
Remus doesn’t have a good response, so he settles for gazing down at his shoes and worrying at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. There’s an ache in his chest. His lungs are filling up with it, and he feels like he’s choking. This conversation is not going well, and they’re only just talking about Wormtail, for Merlin’s sake. Remus hasn’t even started in on the excuses yet.
When he finally gets the nerve to look back up at Sirius, Sirius is watching him.
“I know what you’re thinking, Moony,” he says softly. “This isn’t exactly the reunion you expected.” He lets out a short, forced laugh, and it is full of self-hatred. Remus is well-acquainted enough with the feeling to know the sound. “Well, I suppose I owe you an apology. After Azkaban, I’m afraid I’m no fun anymore.”
“No, don’t say that,” Remus protests at once, his voice cracking. He clears his throat hastily. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I’m no fun anymore, either.”
Sirius’s dark expression wavers and then pulls into a small grin. “You never really were, actually,” he points out.
And that—the return of an ancient joke between them—that’s enough normalcy to make them share a real laugh. Sirius raises his glass into the air in an ironic toast, and Remus follows suit. They both swallow the rest of their drinks in a single breath. By the time they surface for air, coughing slightly, the tension between them has splintered into something resembling relief.
“So, you were Harry’s teacher for an entire year?” Sirius asks hungrily, pouring them each another. “Tell me what he’s like, will you?”
Remus does. It’s far easier to talk about Harry than it is to talk about everything else that still hangs between them. And as they talk, a curious thing begins to happen. Sirius begins to solidify in Remus's vision, losing that odd, out-of-place look. He no longer has the blurred edges of a memory; he's really here, on the living room couch. And the more Remus drinks, the more clearly he sees him—perhaps because he is finally building up the courage to really look.
One of the things he sees is that, despite having spent only a single night in his company, Sirius already loves his godson. When Remus reports that Harry has the best marks in Defense in his year, Sirius swells with pride. When he reveals that Harry’s boggart turns into a dementor, Sirius’s face crumples in sympathy. And when he describes Harry’s efforts throughout the year to cast a Patronus, culminating in the one that saved Sirius’s soul, Sirius cheers.
“A full Patronus!” he howls, slapping his leg in excitement. “Merlin, I wish I could’ve seen it! It’s a bloody shame I fainted, isn’t it?”
Remus gives him a weak smile. “Bad luck,” he agrees.
“A Patronus in third year,” Sirius murmurs, shaking his head in awe. “That’s brilliant. None of us managed ours until the end of sixth.” He settles back into his seat, his eyes sliding into a softer focus as he recalls something. “Do you remember that day, Moony? When the two of us cast our first ones?”
Remus bites his lip and nods. Of course he does.
It was nearing the end of their third Defense lesson on the Patronus Charm, and James was still the only one of them who had managed to produce one. Remus was drained, his legs wobbling a bit as he braced himself to attempt the spell yet again. But his concentration was broken as a smattering of gasps broke out from behind him.
He turned around. A cloud of mist had engulfed the table where Sirius stood, and, from it, a great silvery white dog leaped forth, its long tongue lolling out of a happily grinning mouth. It circled around Sirius twice before galloping down the aisle between the tables, headed right for Remus. As the rest of the Gryffindors watched, it settled on its haunches at Remus’s feet.
“You alright, Moony?” Sirius asked, loping over behind his Patronus and slinging an arm around Remus’s shoulders.
Remus could feel his exhausted knees buckling under the extra weight. “Been better,” he muttered. “I think this is the first charm I’ve ever had real trouble with.”
“You just need to find the right happy memory. I used the one from fifth year, right before we left for the summer hols. You know the one.”
Remus felt his cheeks getting hot at the thought of the day he and Sirius finally admitted to each other, after a raging row in the dormitory, that they fancied one another. Even though they hadn’t known exactly what that meant—and they still didn’t, really—it’d been the loveliest feeling. “You really think that’d work?” he said, ducking out from under Sirius’s arm to free his body. He fiddled with his wand, trying to recall the exact feeling and stoke it up in his belly.
Sirius shot Remus a winning grin. “Only if you liked that memory as much as I did.”
Remus rolled his eyes and raised his wand again, a firm hold on the feeling now burning in his core. This time, when he uttered the incantation, it felt different. In a flood of bright light, the white wolf emerged, slowly, as if testing the water. It gave the air a tentative sniff before turning around to face Remus, Sirius, and the Patronus Padfoot.
“Hey, look, he’s a cautious old man, just like you,” Remus heard Sirius murmur affectionately. He threw an elbow in the general direction of Sirius’s ribs, but it was half-hearted at best. He couldn’t look away from where Patronus Moony was now approaching Patronus Padfoot.
The two ghostly animals were near mirror images of each other. The wolf had a slim, sleeker head, while the dog had a wild mane of fur around its neck. The dog seemed to grin easily, tongue out and panting, while the wolf remained stoic. But it was unmistakable: they had the same eyes, the same snout, the same ears pricked up to the sky. The pearlescent figures moved forward and bumped their noses together gently. Then, nuzzling against each other, they laid down on the floor side-by-side and closed their eyes. Even to the most ignorant observer, the scene looked intimate.
“Moony,” he heard Sirius breathe into his ear.
Remus was suddenly all too aware of the eyes of his Gryffindor classmates.
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” he muttered under his breath, embarrassed. He let Patronus Moony evaporate with a wave of his wand, and Patronus Padfoot, too, withered away a moment later.
“Do you think it was written?” Sirius muses, breaking Remus out of his reverie. They’ve both been silent for some time, stewing in the memory. “The two of us?”
“Written?” Remus repeats blankly. “As in, destined?”
Sirius nods. “I used to wonder about that sometimes. The idea of it kept me going when things were tough. I mean, why else would our Patronuses look so similar?”
Remus shrugs. “You’ve read the Defense theory, just like I have. Your Patronus takes the form of the thing that makes you the happiest, the thing that protects you from despair.”
He doesn’t quite realize what he’s saying until the words are already out. They hit a little too close to home and he coughs, feeling his cheeks grow warm.
“I know the theory, Moony,” Sirius says softly. “But I like to believe that it meant something more. A lot of things are written in the stars, you know. We just never find out about them because it takes the right Seer to read the sky.”
It’s easy to forget that Sirius still holds onto parts of his upbringing within the House of Black, insidious, tenacious barbs that burrowed silently under his soft juvenile skin long before he knew any better. Though he’s tried and tried, he hasn’t been able to shake them loose, and, of all things, a belief in the mystical seems to have stuck.
Remus sighs. The liquor burns in his chest and makes him feel like being honest. “Well, if we were destined to be together, then why did we end in such disaster?”
Sirius shrugs. “The nighttime sky is full of tragedies. My mum used to tell them to me as bedtime stories.” He takes a long drink and clears his throat. “You know, sometimes I think that if I’d paid a little more attention during her astrology lessons, I could’ve seen it all coming. I could’ve convinced you to quit the war before it was too late. We could’ve run away together to some tropical island—I’ve heard Bali’s great.” He lets out a soft laugh. “We could’ve brought Prongs, and Lily, and Harry, too. Even Wormtail. Maybe if we took him to Bali, he never would’ve turned.”
Remus shakes his head. This all feels familiar: the fantasies, the bargaining, the retreat into childlike simplicity in an effort to make sense of what can’t be understood. He traversed those same steps himself, a long time ago. But with a surge of sorrow, it dawns on him that Sirius is still just at the beginning. Thirteen years have passed, but Sirius is only now getting the chance to start to heal.
“It’s no use thinking these things,” he tells Sirius gently. “None of us would’ve quit the war, and you know it. We were too Gryffindor. Too proud.”
“Fuck pride,” Sirius says acerbically. “Pride is what did us in, Moony. When I was in Azkaban, there was nothing else to do, so I turned over every dreary memory that the dementors left in my brain, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. And I kept coming back to pride. I made Wormtail the Secret Keeper over you, because I didn’t feel good about us back then. I—I felt you pulling away from me, but I was too proud to ask why.”
Remus swallows hard. He doesn’t know how the conversation has shifted from safe topics, like Harry and his Patronus, to us —but the ache in his lungs is back.
It’s time for the excuses to start to flow.
They were deep into their third year fighting in the war, and Remus was spending more time undercover with the werewolves than he did at home. He had grown accustomed to the wilderness now, the rough settlement where the pack lived, the wide expanse of the nighttime sky sprinkled with stars. He actually liked all of the open space. Whenever he could, he would leave the settlement and wander the forest alone; these days, it was only when he was alone that he could truly relax. Alone, he didn’t have to look constantly over his shoulder, sleep with one eye open, dodge questions and tell half-truths. Alone, he could almost forget the weight of the great responsibility that rested on his shoulders.
The pack he had joined was the largest one in the British Isles, and some of the last remaining werewolves that hadn’t yet declared their loyalty to Voldemort. Voldemort had recruited the extremist fringe packs long ago, the known wizard-haters, but the elders of this particular pack were moderate isolationists, suspicious of trusting anyone but their own kind. Dumbledore had made it clear to Remus that the Order had no hope of counterbalancing the more militant werewolves unless he succeeded in getting this pack on their side. And so, with the stakes so high, Remus had no choice. He’d spent the better part of the past year living a lie.
But as exhausting as it was to lie to the pack, it was lying to Sirius that was costing him more.
Remus had barely closed the front door and dropped his battered knapsack in the hallway before Sirius rushed over to plant a wet hello kiss on him. “Moony!” he called out, tangling his arms around Remus’s middle and squeezing until it hurt. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me, too,” Remus replied automatically, feeling a rush of guilt as he realized he wasn’t sure it was true. Coming home should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. Here in their tiny flat, there was nowhere for him to relax. There was nowhere for him to be alone.
“Prongs and Lily sent another photo of Harry while you were gone,” Sirius said happily, holding it out for Remus to see. “Look how big he’s grown! He’s nearly six months old now.”
Remus looked down at the picture of the wild-haired baby grinning and grabbing at his own foot. He felt his tired face, almost always set in a grimace these days, manage a small smile. “Are they still at the safe house? The same one from before I left?”
Sirius nodded. “So far, so good. Let’s hope this one sticks. If it doesn’t, Dumbledore says they might have to use the Fidelius Charm. But Prongs isn’t too keen on the idea—it would mean they couldn’t really have visitors anymore, and he’s been bored out of his mind as it is.”
Remus gave an absent hum of agreement. He knew James had never been one to sit still, so all of this hiding had to be killing him.
He made to step around Sirius and head inside the flat, but Sirius wrapped himself around his torso again. “I missed you, my love,” he said. “How was your mission?”
Remus pressed his lips together. There was so much he couldn’t share with Sirius these days. Sirius knew only that he was negotiating with werewolves on the Order’s behalf, not that he had infiltrated their ranks as a spy. On this, Dumbledore had sworn Remus to total secrecy. Given the importance of his mission, and their suspicions about the presence of a traitor in their midst, it was too risky even to tell the other Order members what Remus was doing.
“It was fine,” Remus said shortly. “I’m returning next week to continue the talks. These werewolves have important intelligence on the Death Eaters that the Order needs.”
Sirius was still holding him tight. “How about I draw us a nice bubble bath, and you can tell me all about it while we soak?” he said, looking up at Remus with a mischievous grin.
Remus sighed and shook his head, shrugging out from within Sirius’s grasp. “I’ve had a long day, Padfoot. I just want some peace and quiet if that’s okay.”
Sirius frowned, his face falling in a way that might’ve broken Remus’s heart if he wasn’t too bone tired to feel much of anything. “You alright?” he asked Remus quietly.
No, I’m not, Remus wanted to say. But he only nodded.
Remus wasn’t sure how things had changed so quickly. Not long ago, he’d loved their tiny flat. He and Sirius were never out of arm’s reach of one another. They’d spend long, lazy days together in bed, their small bedroom a cocoon that hid them from the outside world. They’d sidle up close to each other in their narrow kitchen, no matter whose turn it was to cook. Even when Sirius went out for a cigarette, perched on the crumbling brick wall of their dilapidated front porch, Remus would go out with him. Under the pretense of flipping through a paperback, he would sit and watch the mesmerizing movement of Sirius’s lips as he inhaled and exhaled smoke.
These days, though, their tiny flat was feeling more and more like a prison. Sirius was everywhere, watching him, doting on him, asking too many questions. The things left unspoken between them were building up and filling the stagnant air inside their flat until Remus longed to be alone, to roam again in the forest under the open sky. Being home felt so oppressive that he was sometimes seized by the urge to dash out the door, pick a random direction, and run. But in his heart of hearts, he knew that his problem wasn't really with the flat.
It was with the lies.
Between his lies to the werewolves and his lies to Sirius, Remus could barely remember who he was anymore. The lies were slowly wringing the life out of him, kneading him like dough, pressing him into a corner from all sides. He would've torn off his own skin if it meant that he could get away from them.
But as it was, the best he could do was to get away from Sirius, and the guilt that soured his stomach whenever he was forced to look him in the eye. During the day, Remus got into the habit of going on long walks through the London streets to ease his itchy feet. At night, he stayed up late, browsing books about the dynamics of werewolf packs until he fell asleep on the couch. “Come to bed with me, Moony?” Sirius would implore each night when he turned in. But most nights, Remus would only shake his head and mumble an excuse about Order research and how he needed to read.
As the months wore on, the space between them grew and the warmth between them faltered. Remus was miserable, but he told himself again and again that it wouldn't last forever. It was like diving into the ocean with burning lungs full of air; he only had to hang on for a little while longer, and then he could surface. Once the war was over, he would tell Sirius everything.
“So, I know I was distant, towards the end,” Remus admits, staring down into the amber depths of his firewhiskey. He can’t bear to look up into Sirius’s face. “But it had nothing to do with you. I felt awful all the time, and I couldn’t tell you why, so it was easier just to pull away.”
“I see,” Sirius says slowly, turning it all over in his mind. “Well, I should’ve asked you what was wrong, regardless. I should’ve pushed you to tell me whatever you could. We could have figured it out together. But I didn’t—because I was afraid of what you might say.” There’s a long pause, and Remus hears the clink of glass on glass as Sirius refills his drink. When he speaks again, he sounds pained. “To tell you the truth, Moony, I was afraid that…when you stopped coming to bed with me at night, when you started sleeping on the couch…I was afraid that maybe you’d changed your mind about me. I thought, since we weren’t in school anymore, that I’d—I dunno—lost my sheen or something.”
Remus’s head shoots up in surprise. He can’t believe his ears. Leave it to Sirius to be insecure about himself when he’s been the brightest thing in any goddamn room since they were all thirteen years old. “That’s what you thought was the matter?” he groans. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Padfoot. Have you ever seen yourself in a mirror? Twelve years in Azkaban and you didn’t lose your fucking sheen, you wanker.”
A small smirk grows on Sirius’s face. For a moment, he looks just like his old self. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Remus’s heart begins to pound, but he raises a finger to stop Sirius. “Not right now, Padfoot,” he warns in a strained voice. “Please.”
Sirius’s expression sobers. “Right,” he says gruffly. “Well, I suppose this explains a lot, then. Why you’d disappear all day. Why you seemed so distracted.” He sighs. “You were gone so often, and even when you were home, you weren’t fully there with me. It felt like you were living a whole life without me, one that was more real to you than the life you were living with me. So, when there was a traitor in the Order—”
“You thought it was me,” Remus finishes grimly. “You could be forgiven for thinking so. I was spending a lot of time with werewolves. They could’ve easily gotten to me, extorted me for information.”
“Well, I didn’t want to believe it. But once the idea got into my head, you know, I couldn’t get it out. So, when Prongs asked me whether I thought he could trust you, I had to tell him the truth. That I couldn’t be sure.”
Remus nods. “Fair,” he mutters.
“But you thought I was the traitor?” Sirius asks.
Remus shrugs. “Not at first, but once Dumbledore called me back from the pack and told me what had happened, it did seem to make a lot of sense. I just kept thinking back to when, after your brother went missing, you started to receive a lot of post. There were owls that I didn’t recognize, coming by our flat day and night with post for you. Remember?”
Sirius knits his eyebrows and nods.
“Well, I didn’t pry—we never did, you know, when it came to Regulus—but I always thought that maybe he was still alive and you two were corresponding in secret. So, when they said you’d admitted to the crime, I figured I was right, and he’d somehow turned you, convinced you to switch sides.”
Sirius rubs a hand over his face with a sigh of comprehension. “I see,” he says again, his voice hollow. “No, I’m pretty sure Regulus is dead. It was my mother who sent all those owls. When Regulus disappeared, she started writing me again. She was desperate. With him gone, and my father killed in an honor duel, she was alone in that big empty house. She wanted me to come home. But I never answered her. I just let it bloody well eat me up inside.”
Remus tries to swallow away his surprise. “Why didn’t you ever tell me she wrote you?”
Sirius sets his mouth into a hard line. “Why didn’t you ever tell me what was bothering you during the war?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “It was the same reason—I felt awful about it, and I thought that maybe if I avoided the problem for long enough, it would go away.”
This startles a wry laugh out of Remus. “Merlin, Padfoot, we really buggered this up for ourselves, didn’t we? We were so young back then. We had no idea what we were doing—with the war or with each other.”
Sirius nods, looking suddenly pensive. “You know,” he says, “there’s something I never told you. And now it’s starting to make a lot more sense.”
The long summer sun was just setting as Sirius made his way from the Apparition point through the hedgerows and whispered the charm to gain entrance to the Order’s temporary headquarters. To minimize the risk of capture, the headquarters rotated every few weeks, between the back room at the Hog’s Head, an abandoned building in London registered to Kingsley Shacklebolt, and—the place Sirius was set to meet Dumbledore tonight—a house in the countryside where Mad-Eye Moody lived.
Sirius felt cheerful, more cheerful than he’d felt in weeks. He’d stopped to visit with James and Lily earlier that day to see his godson, who was still not even a month old. Harry was so tiny in his blankets that Sirius was afraid to hold him, but once Lily finally managed to ease the bundle into his shaking arms, Sirius had bent down, kissed and kissed his soft round cheeks, and sniffed in that perplexing, intoxicating baby smell until he felt lighter than air.
“You have to give him back eventually, Padfoot,” James had said with a laugh. “He has to eat.”
After reluctantly relinquishing Harry back to Lily, Sirius had led James into the study and unfurled the large scroll of parchment he’d brought with him. “Check out these plans, mate. I’m hand-delivering them to Dumbledore myself.”
Dumbledore had recently tasked Sirius with a crucial assignment, something nobody else in the Order could do: to sketch out a blueprint of Malfoy Manor from memory. There was no information at all about the structure in the Ministry archives, not a single document—the secretive, suspicious Abraxas Malfoy had seen to that. So, the Order was counting on Sirius. He’d had the full tour of the place only once, when Narcissa showed off each extravagant room to all of her relatives assembled there for her wedding, but years of creating the sketches of the Hogwarts corridors that would eventually become the Marauder’s Map had helped. Sirius had practice looking at a room, remembering its details, sketching it, bringing it into his vision like a photograph. He had excellent memory recall, down to, even, the number of windows and doors.
It made Sirius proud, looking down at the large roll of parchment covered in carefully inked lines and squares. He was never happier than when he felt useful.
“Looks good,” James had said approvingly. “You’ve been getting better. When the war’s over, maybe you should become a mapmaker full-time.” He’d grinned at Sirius before adding, “Oh, and when you see Dumbledore tonight, can you tell him that I think it’s time Lily, Harry, and I move again? I reckon they’re closing in on this safe house. When I was out scouting under the cloak yesterday, I saw Evan Rosier sniffing around the square in the next town over.”
Sirius had nodded, refusing to allow this news to dampen his good mood. They were staying one step ahead of their enemies, and, in war, that was all that mattered.
There were muffled voices coming from the living room at Mad-Eye’s as Sirius let himself in through the back door. He focused in on them with his sharp canine ears and heard Dumbledore’s gentle lilt, followed by a brisk brogue Sirius recognized at once as Minerva McGonagall’s.
“He’s still just a boy, Albus! Remember that, won’t you? This latest plan of yours—I fear you’re asking too much.”
“The war must be won,” Dumbledore said calmly. “Do not let sentimentality for your old students cloud your judgment on what must be done, Minerva.”
“You’re pushing them too hard, Albus,” McGonagall insisted. Sirius could almost visualize her thin lips pressing together until they disappeared, as they did whenever she disapproved of something. “Those boys are not alright, can’t you tell? Have you seen Lupin recently? He looks like he’s aged a decade. Pettigrew is jumpier than ever. And Black, he’s not quite the same anymore, either. It feels like he’s…lost something.”
Sirius clutched the Malfoy Manor blueprints tightly in his clenched fist. He wanted to race down the hallway and burst into the living room to challenge her. She didn’t know what she was talking about. He hadn’t lost anything. Things were a bit tough lately, sure, but he was alright.
Wasn’t he? The splinter of dread lodged in his chest begged to differ. It dug deeper at the sound of her words, puncturing the lightness of his mood like a balloon.
On the surface, yes, everything was alright. He and Remus had a lovely flat in central London, with a magically hidden garage out back for his flying motorbike. They were lucky to be together in wartime, lucky to have each other, lucky to be alive when so many around them had died.
But the truth was that Sirius did not feel lucky at all. In recent weeks, the playful banter that used to light up their flat, electrifying the air between him and Remus, was gone. His jokes were met with weak smiles, his hugs with limp arms. And Remus rarely came to bed now, either. Each morning, Sirius would roll over and fling his limbs out into the space where Remus used to be and find nothing but ice-cold sheets. He’d come out into the living room to find him curled up on the couch surrounded by old books. But there was nothing Sirius could do about it, other than to cover him with a spare blanket and pretend not to be hurt once he woke.
“I am aware that I'm pushing them,” Sirius heard Dumbledore say, followed by a deep sigh. “But if we lose the war, the rest of it matters little. Send for Lupin. Tell him I need an update on the latest.”
“But—”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Minerva. I have a visitor and a very important set of blueprints waiting for me out in the hallway.”
“Fucking Dumbledore,” Remus mutters furiously. The old man has always prepared them for the tasks he needs them to do, but not for the damage afterwards. “Well, it turns out McGonagall was right. We weren’t alright, were we?”
“No,” Sirius agrees. “We weren’t, and Minnie saw that. She’s a terrifying woman, mind, but she really cared about us.”
Remus nods. “After everything happened and you got sent to Azkaban, she used to come by now and then to make sure I was still alive. There were times when she sat at my kitchen table and refused to leave until she saw me eat something. I suppose all of that makes sense now, too. She saw what the war was doing to me—to us.”
“Well, we were idiots,” Sirius says dryly. “The war was what it was, but we were the ones who let it get between us.”
The ache in Remus’s chest hurts so badly now that it feels like it’s going to tear him in two. He hunches forward in his seat to refill his glass yet again, but by this point, his head is already swimming and his thoughts are loose. His tongue, it seems, is even looser. “I know,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry, Padfoot, I really am. I’m sorry everything happened the way it did. If I had known—that this is how we’d end up—”
He has to cut himself off as a painful lump forms in the back of his throat. He lets out a little shiver of misery and then falls quiet.
The silence stretches on between them. Remus doesn’t know when he's started to wish that Sirius would get to his feet, close the space between them, and gather him up into his arms, but suddenly it’s the only thing in the world that Remus wants. In the past, this was always Sirius’s way of fixing problems, holding Remus, comforting him until they both felt better. Whenever there was a problem, Sirius was always the one to jump into action, while Remus was always the one who waited too long. But Sirius doesn’t reach out for him now. He only leans back in his seat, closes his eyes, and rests his head on the back of the couch.
This isn’t the same man who was dragged away to Azkaban.
Remus is just wondering whether the firewhiskey has put Sirius to sleep when Sirius speaks again. “It was painful, yes,” he says, so softly that Remus has to lean forward in his armchair to hear him. “But even knowing how things turned out…in the end, I think I’d do it all again.”
Remus feels his breath catch in his throat. “Do what?”
“Be with you,” Sirius says without opening his eyes. “The end hurt, I won't deny it. But everything we had before that—it was worth it.”
Remus is grateful that Sirius isn’t looking at him because it makes it easier for him to draw upon his courage. If Sirius won’t be the one to jump into action tonight, then Remus will have to be. This time, Remus won’t wait too long.
“We can have all of that again, you know,” he says, sounding far more confident than he feels. “We're both here now, aren't we? Let's give it another go. I know it might not be exactly the way it was before, but it doesn't matter. We can figure it out.”
Sirius doesn’t smile. He doesn’t open his eyes, either. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he whispers.
“Let’s start over,” Remus says impulsively. “Let’s go away. Let’s go to—to Bali.” He barely knows what he’s suggesting, but he does know that it’s just the kind of wild, impractical idea that Sirius would love. “I think we deserve a holiday after all this, don’t you? And if you have to be on the run, might as well be on the run somewhere nice.”
There’s a long pause. “You’d come with me?” Sirius asks.
“Why not?” Remus says dryly. “I’m unemployed and friendless—nobody will wonder where I am.”
This brings a smile to Sirius’s face. “Okay,” he murmurs. “That sounds nice.” After a few more minutes, he heaves a tired sigh and opens his eyes. “Well, I think it’s time for bed, Moony. I haven’t gotten much sleep on the run and I’m knackered. Bali can wait until morning. If you’ll just give me a blanket, I’ll kip out here.”
“No,” Remus declares, and again he surprises himself with how loudly and forcefully his voice rings out. “You’re not sleeping on the couch. That’s what got us into trouble the last time, isn’t it? I won’t let it happen again. This time, we're doing it right.”
“Doing it right?” Sirius repeats.
Remus feels his heartbeat escalating. He’s starting to get clarity now, the kind of clarity that only a half-bottle of firewhiskey can bring. “Yes,” he says firmly. “If we're going to start over, we have to go back to the beginning. Sleeping next to each other is what brought us together in the first place. Somewhere along the way, I guess we forgot how important it was to us, but it’s what made us…us. Don’t you remember, Padfoot? You used to crawl into my bed all the time at Hogwarts. Those were my favorite nights. I used to spend every night hoping you’d show up.”
“I remember,” Sirius says. “I remember how it all started.”
It had been a long night, but the moon was finally setting, and the first pink glow of early dawn was breaking the horizon outside the Shrieking Shack. As the moon faded from the sky, the wolf seemed to lose steam, and Sirius thought he could see a little more of Remus behind his wild yellow eyes. None of them dared to change back to their human forms yet, though. This was their first time witnessing the transformation, and they didn’t want to push their luck. They knew they should count themselves lucky that the wolf had eventually warmed up to them at all.
When the wolf staggered over to the dusty bed and collapsed onto it, tiny whimpers of pain in the back of his throat signaling the start of the transformation, Prongs trotted across the room and began to use his nose to nudge Padfoot and Wormtail in the direction of the trapdoor. It was clear that James thought it was time for them to go, to leave Remus to turn back to his human form in peace. Wormtail ran obediently behind Prongs as he headed towards the door, both animals moving with markedly less energy than they had earlier in the night. Sirius, too, was exhausted, and the lure of his soft, warm four-poster back in the dormitory was strong.
But no. Sirius sat back firmly on his haunches, giving out a short defiant bark that he hoped would convey his message: Remus was in pain and he was staying.
Then, he loped over to the bed and jumped onto the mattress, nuzzling against the trembling wolf and turning around in several circles to find a comfortable spot next to him. It was not a good mattress; it was old and lumpy, with deep gashes where the wolf had previously slashed at it in a fury. But Sirius didn’t mind. The heat of the wolf’s prone body curled up next to his felt comforting. He only hoped that Remus felt comforted, too. It was the only thing Sirius could do for him at the moment.
He sensed—smelled, perhaps—that Prongs and Wormtail had lingered for a moment in the doorway but were now gone. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the scent of the wolf, too, changed, and he felt a thin, shaking human arm enclose around his body and pull him close.
“Sirius,” Remus murmured, his voice hardly more than a breath. He seemed too exhausted to say more; he simply buried his face in Padfoot’s coat, and soon, Sirius could feel his chest moving in the deep, even breaths of sleep.
Sirius nuzzled closer to Remus, feeling his eyelids drooping shut, and he found himself wishing that sunrise wasn’t coming so soon. Once the sun rose, it wouldn’t be long until Madam Pomfrey would appear to fetch Remus back to the Hospital Wing, and Padfoot would have to make himself scarce before she arrived. But he didn’t want to leave. He liked this, lying here wrapped in Remus’s arms. He felt so relaxed, so drowsy. Sleep was tugging at him, making his canine body and what was left of his human consciousness feel so, so heavy.
There was something else, too. Remus was exuding a scent that Sirius had never smelled before as either human or dog—a sweet, lovely scent that made Padfoot’s heart feel so full that it might burst. Sirius craned his snout to follow it. It was pouring out from behind Remus’s ears, the back of his neck, under his arms, the pressure points where his pulse beat inside his wrists. What was it? Sirius strained to put his finger on it, but his brain was only Padfoot’s, and he couldn’t think.
On a whim, he allowed his body to melt back into its human form. But as Padfoot’s snout disappeared, the scent disappeared along with it, leaving behind only an overwhelming wave of affection that crashed over Sirius’s human mind and body like an avalanche.
He was pressed up against Remus in a way that should have been uncomfortable, that should have made him want to pull away. Their legs were wound together in a tangle. One of his arms was curled around Remus, the other crushed in between them. One of Remus’s arms, too, was still draped over his side from when he’d reached out to draw Padfoot close. But Sirius didn’t want to move.
Sirius had been this close to a couple other blokes before, squeezed into broom closets and behind tapestries. But this was Remus, one of his closest friends, and Sirius certainly didn’t want to grope him hastily behind a tapestry. No, what he wanted to do was reach out and stroke a hand through those honey curls. He wanted to sprinkle kisses across his forehead and smooth out the deep wrinkles of worry that furrowed Remus’s eyebrows even in sleep.
Sirius shifted his body a bit and Remus stirred. As Remus’s warm brown eyes popped open and widened in surprise, Sirius grinned down at him. “Hi,” he murmured, hoping Remus wouldn’t pull away. “You alright?”
Remus didn’t move a muscle. “Yeah, I think so,” he breathed. “What are you…?”
Sirius gave as much of a shrug as he could manage without disturbing the position of their bodies. “This is kind of nice, isn’t it?” he whispered.
Remus smiled before his eyes fluttered shut again. “It is,” he agreed. “Just listen out for Madam Pomfrey. She always knocks to give me time to make myself decent. I reckon it’ll give you enough time to sneak away.”
Before long, they’d both drifted off into a more wonderful sleep on that lumpy, slashed mattress than they'd ever had sleeping alone.
“That was the night I first realized how I felt about you,” Sirius says. “The night that Moony met Padfoot. Moony was wild and uncontrollable when he first met Prongs and Wormtail. He was tearing up the place—bashing into the walls, slashing up the curtains. Fuck, we were all saying our last prayers to Merlin. We were sure we were goners, until he sniffed out Padfoot. It was the only thing that calmed him down.”
“Really?” Remus asks in wonder, feeling a blush warming his cheeks. He isn’t sure how they’ve gone so many years without this ever coming up.
“You don’t remember?”
Remus shakes his head. “I don’t remember anything while I’m Moony, you know that.”
Sirius chuckles. “Well, after nearly taking a chunk out of Prongs’s hindquarters and swallowing Wormtail whole, Moony came up to Padfoot and nuzzled him under the chin. Nuzzled him like a long-lost mate.”
“Just like my Patronus did,” Remus says.
Sirius laughs in earnest now. “Yeah. We weren't really that subtle, now that I think about it. I’m surprised nobody figured it out sooner, with all of the signs. But I guess they just thought it was a canine thing – that maybe the dog and the wolf had a special connection because they were kin. They didn’t have a clue why Moony loved Padfoot back then, and neither did we.”
“I did,” Remus murmurs. His face is so hot that it’s probably crimson. “I already did.”
This time, it’s Sirius who asks in wonder, “Really? You knew before that?”
Remus nods and finishes off the last of his firewhiskey. Before Sirius can react, he continues, “And you’re wrong, by the way. That wasn’t the first time we slept in the same bed. It was fourth year. But I’m not surprised that you don’t remember. Back then, it probably meant nothing to you. But it meant something to me.”
Remus shifted again, feeling the new body wedged against his own in the darkness, and rolled over under the covers. “W-wassamatter?” He peered blearily into the darkness, but faster than it was possible for his eyes to adjust, he guessed, “Sirius?”
“Yeah,” Sirius whispered, sounding sheepish. “How’d you know it was me?”
“Smelled like you,” Remus mumbled sleepily.
“Smelled like me?” Sirius repeated. “Why do you know what I smell like?” Remus felt his entire body tense up, but Sirius just chuckled. “Relax, Moony, only joking. Hope I smell nice—not like wet dog or something.”
“Like a wet dog that’s been rummaging around in the rubbish pile,” Remus retorted, wide awake now after nearly letting everything slip. He propped himself up on an elbow, yawning. “What are you doing in here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Bad dream.”
“Same one as usual?”
Sirius paused. “No. Different. Worse.”
“You alright?”
Sirius didn’t respond, but his silence was answer enough.
Remus lowered his head back down onto his pillow, and Sirius followed suit. They laid next to each other, staring up at the canopy of the bed. There wasn’t very much extra room, but if they crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, it was comfortable enough. After all, these beds had to fit even the largest students easily.
Remus's heart was pounding wildly, but he could feel himself swelling with pride, too. Sirius had sought him out, needed him. After a nightmare that was worse than most, Sirius hadn’t just wanted to make a sheet fort or eat some chocolate—the things they usually did when he woke in a sweaty terror. No...he’d wanted Remus.
“Wanna talk about it at all?” Remus asked him quietly.
Sirius shook his head, and they were so close together on the pillow that Remus could feel him do it.
“Okay, well, you do realize you just crawled into bed with a werewolf, right?” Remus joked. Making light of the situation, acting like it meant nothing, was better than admitting to himself that he wanted it to mean more. “Could be dangerous, you know.”
“Oh, Moony, you know I don’t care about that,” Sirius said firmly, rolling over onto his side to face Remus. In the little bit of moonlight that was filtering in through his bedcurtains, this eye contact was too much, his face too close, and Remus turned away.
“Fine,” he whispered. “You can stay. But I’m going back to sleep. We’ve got three feet of parchment on bicorn horn due to Slughorn tomorrow, remember?”
Sirius snuggled in deeper underneath the blankets and wiggled his toes. “Thanks,” he said, and it came out as more of a content sigh. “Budge over a little more, will you?”
“See?” Remus says, standing up rather unsteadily. He stumbles a few steps around the coffee table that separates them and stretches out a hand to haul Sirius to his feet. “It’s always made you feel better, sleeping next to me.”
Sirius stares at Remus’s offered hand but doesn’t move. If anything, he looks rather embarrassed. “You’re right, Moony. And I want to,” he whispers. “It’s just that I don’t know if I can.”
Remus frowns, perplexed. He can’t recall ever seeing the notoriously shameless Sirius Black like this. It might be the first time that shame, or anything close to it, has ever crossed his face.
Sirius sees his confusion and tries again. “What I mean is, it’s been a long time since I…” He gestures between them, trailing off as his arm drops back into his lap.
Oh. So, the innuendos that have been slipping easily off of Sirius’s tongue all day are nothing but old, meaningless habit. Again, with a jolt, Remus discovers that this isn’t the same man who was dragged away to Azkaban. “It’s okay,” he assures Sirius. “It’s been a long time for me, too, you know. So, don’t worry about that. We don't have to do that right now. ”
He reaches again for Sirius’s hand, and, as if to demonstrate the things he can’t say out loud, Sirius flinches instinctively away.
Remus retreats immediately, and Sirius looks more embarrassed than ever. Remus’s heart hurts as he realizes that living as Padfoot might have saved his sanity in Azkaban, but so many years without touch would have been brutal, even as a dog.
“Don’t worry,” Remus assures him again. “I understand. I shouldn’t have pushed you. Stay here—I’ll go get you a blanket.”
He turns away to head down the hall, but Sirius stops him. “No, wait.” He swallows, and Remus watches his larynx bob in his too-thin throat. “I want to try. But...will you take Padfoot instead? That’ll be easier for me, I think.”
Remus nods. He doesn’t attempt to touch Sirius again. Instead, he takes a few steps towards the bedroom, feeling the world spinning a bit under his feet. “I’m going to go brush my teeth and change into my pajamas. Take your time. Padfoot can join me whenever he’s ready—if he wants.”
About ten minutes after Remus extinguishes the lights and climbs into bed, a large dark form nudges his bedroom door open with its nose and hops cautiously onto the covers. Even after all these years, burying his face into Padfoot’s coat, wrapping his arms around the warm, solid body—to Remus, it feels like home. At first, Remus fears that he’ll have too much on his mind to fall asleep, but with Padfoot curled up against him, he dozes off with greater ease than he has in years, and his sleep is dreamless and restful.
The sun has not yet risen, and the bedroom is still dark, when Remus wakes with a start. Padfoot is gone. Sometime in the course of the night, dark fur has retreated back into smooth skin and paws have again become human fingers curled gently into the folds of Remus’s pajama shirt. Sirius is tucked into Remus, just as he has been so many times before, his slow breaths tickling Remus’s neck.
Remus leans forward to press a gentle kiss onto his forehead, and Sirius stirs. Remus watches his eyes open, and in the dim light, his face looks young, timeless. He looks like he’s fourteen, brow damp with the sweat of a bad dream.
He looks like he’s fifteen, exhausted after the full moon.
He looks like he’s sixteen, lips red and bitten from too many kisses.
He looks like he’s seventeen, skimming elegant fingers across Remus’s scars.
He looks like he’s eighteen, sticky and spent from a romp in their flat.
He looks like he’s nineteen, tan and strong after a trip to the beach.
Remus can’t tell how old Sirius is, and it doesn’t matter, because it feels like time can’t touch them when they lie with each other, just like this. “Sirius, my love,” Remus whispers.
Sirius blinks up at him but doesn’t move.
“You alright?” Remus asks, reaching out to drape an arm over his side, like he used to do when they were young.
Sirius finally smiles. “Yeah, I think so.”
And for the first time in over thirteen years, Remus feels alright, too.