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Sirius was angry.

He was angry and he was tired and he was hurt.

Betrayed not only by those who he had loved, but by those who he had done everything for. Even when he hadn’t been the most qualified for the job. Even when he had already given so much. Even when he had been so exhausted that he could have just laid down and stayed there.

He had given everything he had and then he had given more.

And then, he had been left.

A fury boiled within Sirius that he hadn’t felt in years. It surprised him, to feel this angry. He could only just remember how it had felt to be this angry all those years ago. He could only just remember that this was what anger felt like. It scraped along the edges of a solid recollection, giving Sirius only enough to identify the feeling. It gave him the bare minimum and that was that.

He looked and he looked for deeper memories, something more clear, something more solid that he could cling to. Eventually, he managed to find the edges of past feelings. He found what it had been like to be fifteen and terrified and angry, only just, but he found it. Every now and then he caught a glimpse of what it had felt like to be seventeen and confused. He remembered what it was like to be twenty and desperate for things to end — that one had come with more clarity.

Sirius was intimately acquainted with desperation these days.

But he wasn’t desperate now. No, now he was angry. Now he was furious. Now he was seething.

He had given everything to the war, to the Order, to Dumbledore, and this was how he was repaid?

With twelve years in Azkaban, having his entire life sucked out of him? Followed by an indefinite period of time effectively in hiding? Followed by who knew what — another twelve years fighting? Another twelve years in hiding? Another twelve years forgetting entirely who he was? Another twelve years without human contact, conversation, connection?

He had hugged Harry and he had almost cried.

He didn’t dare even brush against Remus.

Sirius was angry.

Dumbledore had known. He must’ve known. He had always known everything, even things he really shouldn’t have. And anyway, even if he somehow hadn’t known, how many people had been allowed second chances? How many people got offers practically pouring out to them? How many people were rescued from seemingly impossible situations? Sirius hadn’t had any of that.

Remus had known. And for whatever reason, he hadn’t done or hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Sirius didn’t know what he would be more angry about. The idea of Remus giving in so easily, believing in Sirius’ guilt so easily drove Sirius mental. But the idea of Remus feeling like something was wrong and being shot down by whoever was enough to drive Sirius to actually commit a murder.

Energy forced its way through Sirius’ body and brain and he felt like he physically could not take it anymore. Whatever “it” was, it wasn’t working for him. He needed to move, he needed to move, he needed to move. He needed to get out. His chest felt like it was tearing itself apart — he needed to scream and rage and yell. He needed to stand in front of the world as a whole and tell it exactly what he thought.

But he couldn’t even go for a run. Not even as he felt his pulse in his wrists, his forehead, his chest. Not even as he felt like he could tear apart the building brick by brick with his bare hands.

He was effectively imprisoned again.

And some part of him thought that this was worse than Azkaban. Because here Sirius was, one room over from Remus Lupin. One room over from the boy Sirius had loved all those years ago. The boy who had seemingly grown into a man in Sirius’ absence. The man who had lived such a huge part of his life without Sirius, even as they had promised each other they wouldn’t let that happen. The man who seemed to have lived so much of his life alone.

Sirius knew Remus — or he had known Remus — and he knew that Remus would have blamed it all on himself in any way possible. Sirius knew that Remus would have just moved on with things, even as he was blaming himself fiercely and quietly, because that was what Remus excelled in. Sirius knew that Remus would have spent the past twelve years in an ever growing combination of grief, self-loathing, and denial.

More importantly for right now, Sirius knew Remus and he knew that there was no way he could talk to Remus about any of this until Remus decided he was ready to talk about it. Remus simply didn’t talk about things when he didn’t want to. Sirius had never properly understood how Remus managed it.

Sirius had always spoken, even when he hadn’t wanted to. Somehow, words poured out of him even without his choosing them to. Seldom was Sirius able to stop himself.

Of course, there were exceptions. He hadn’t been Secret Keeper for nothing. But the fact remained that Remus was exceptionally good at not talking and there was nothing Sirius could do to convince him otherwise.

The Remus that Sirius had known had spoken a lot and about a lot and to a lot of people. He had always been more than happy to share about the topics he was interested in, or the information he had learnt recently, or the things that he had found beautiful. But when there was something important or something heavy, Sirius had never seen someone so good at pushing it aside.

So what could Sirius do but wait?

He had never been a patient person, but perhaps the twelve years behind him had taught him a new skill. He doubted it. But he supposed this would be one way to test the idea out — he’d have to occupy himself with something.

Sirius slipped back into bed and wrapped the covers tightly around himself.

At least Remus’ spare room was comfortable.

—

“Alright?” Remus asked, eyes resting everywhere but Sirius even as he faced him.

“Yeah,” Sirius replied, his own gaze resting steadily on Remus.

He wanted to grab Remus and make him look. Make him understand and acknowledge that Sirius was there, in Remus’ flat. Make him understand that he wanted to talk and he wanted to know what had happened in the past twelve years and he wanted to understand who Remus was now. But he would never do that. He could never do that. Not even as the desire blended with the anger and his hands itched to do something.

“Good,” Remus said, brushing hair off his face, setting bags of groceries on the kitchen island. “Heard anything from Dumbledore?”

Sirius gave a noise of dissent, his mind still occupied by various plans to get Remus to have an actual, proper conversation with him. Remus hadn’t been unkind, of course. Remus was very rarely unkind, that much Sirius knew. But he was distant. He was so far from Sirius that there was no reasonable way for Sirius to get anything across without seeming like he was unkind himself.

And if there was anything he didn’t want to be to Remus, it was unkind.

It looked as if Remus had aged just as much as Sirius had in the past twelve years. Not a good thing when Remus hadn’t been the one in prison. He looked exhausted and unwell and so very isolated, not only from people, but from living more broadly.

Sirius almost couldn’t bear to look at him. Maybe that was how Remus felt too.

Oh, he was still beautiful. Of course he was still beautiful. Sirius couldn’t imagine a world in which he didn’t think that Remus was beautiful. But he wasn’t well. And Sirius hated the fact that he had seemingly been alone all these years.

There was no trace of anyone else in the flat. There was no trace of anyone else having ever been in the flat, though Sirius was sure there must have been people over sometime. At least, he hoped there had been people over sometime. It was a cosy flat, it was warm and it was well furnished, if a bit shabby, and undoubtedly, it looked like Remus. But it was so lonely that Sirius could almost feel it seeping off the walls.

Or perhaps that was just him. Perhaps it was just Sirius who was lonely.

“I wish he wouldn’t do this to you,” Remus said, tone low and uneasy as he flicked the kettle on. “Tea?”

Sirius’ head snapped up to look at Remus where he found Remus looking at him.

A beat.

“Do what to me?” Sirius asked, working to keep his voice low. He had barely spoken in the past twelve years. He didn’t know how to make his voice do anything but scream. But he was trying. Merlin, he was trying.

“Just,” Remus started, gaze torn away abruptly. He didn’t finish and Sirius could see a tremble in his hands as he pulled mugs out of the cupboard.

“Remus,” Sirius said, slamming into the realisation that he wasn’t sure if he had said the man’s name since moving into his flat. “Remus,” he repeated.

Remus had frozen, back turned to Sirius, fingers gripping the edge of the kitchen bench. Sirius wanted to walk over and ease Remus into movement again. Sirius wanted to take Remus’ hands in his and hold them like they had done all those years ago. Sirius wanted to wrap his arms around Remus and promise that everything would be alright.

He didn’t know that everything would be alright. But he wanted it to be. He wanted Remus to be.

Sirius didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he stayed seated, breathing into the stillness of the room as Remus worked his mind around his muscles again. Silence reigned for another second. Sirius didn’t dare interrupt.

The world stumbled into movement again.

“I wish he hadn’t done this to you,” Remus said, taking in a shaky breath. He walked over to Sirius, setting a mug of tea on the coffee table, stepping back to sit on the floor a fair distance from Sirius with his own mug of tea.

Wordlessly, Sirius picked up the tea and waited for Remus to continue.

“He left you there,” Remus stated, jaw tense in the tell-tale way that Sirius remembered meant Remus was far angrier than he let on. “And now he’s left you here. And he expects you to be good. He expects me to be good,” he bit out.

Sirius didn’t know what to say. He had barely spoken to Remus in the two weeks he had been there. And yet, here was Remus, sitting across from him — distantly sure, but even so — and practically vibrating with anger.

Sirius had forgotten a lot about his life before Azkaban. So much that he wasn’t sure he would ever get back, so much that he wasn’t sure what had been there in the first place. But he hadn’t forgotten just how angry Remus got sometimes. He hadn’t forgotten that Remus had an anger that rivalled Sirius’ when he let it.

“I’m sorry he’s done this to you,” Remus said, looking at Sirius again. “I’m sorry I’ve done this to you.”

Sirius jerked into action. “It’s okay,” he promised, setting his mug back down on the coffee table, moving towards Remus. “It’s okay. You didn’t get a chance. You couldn’t have done anything. They’d have blamed you as well.”

It was like a dam breaking loose. Sirius hadn’t realised how much he had needed to hear that Remus had thought about it. He hadn’t realised how much he had needed to know that Remus hadn’t just let it go. He didn’t blame Remus, he couldn’t. He had tried. He had tried, sitting alone in the darkness of Azkaban to blame Remus, to direct all his anger at Remus. At Remus because he had loved him and he had let this happen. But he couldn’t. Even then, he couldn’t. But still, hearing the confirmation changed everything.

Sirius crouched in front of Remus, ignoring the ache that seemed to exist in his bones these days.

“It’s okay,” Sirius said again, but this time it was a reassurance. Sirius shifted so his hand rested on the floor next to Remus’ knee and he didn’t miss the sharp inhalation at the almost-touch.

“I’m so sorry,” Remus whispered.

—

It had been a month and Sirius still hadn’t touched Remus.

But they had started to speak to each other again. They had started to share their thoughts and their feelings and their memories. Neither of them spoke of the future. Sirius didn’t even know if he was able to imagine a future anymore.

He had always been the best at it. Imagining a future. James was always too focused on the moment, Remus was always too stuck in the past. Sirius didn’t even know why Peter had a problem with it. But Sirius, Sirius had always looked to the future. He had done it since he was a kid. Since he was eight and crying in his room, thinking desperately of the fact that in a few years he would be at Hogwarts and free for at least a little while.

But now it was blank.

Sirius tried to look to the future and there was nothing. He had almost thrown up trying to think about it. It wasn’t there. He couldn’t do it. And he hated it. He had nearly thrown his fist through the wall after he had paced up and down the length of the hallway for what must have been thirty minutes.

But they had started to speak and at the very least, Sirius was relieved for that.

Relieved when they sat across each other eating breakfast together, still distant, but closer than before. Relieved when Remus came home in the afternoons and told Sirius about his day, about how Sirius would have loved the music they had been playing in the muggle bookstore he had been working at. Relieved when he said goodnight and Remus returned the word with a smile that was as much sad as sweet, but there nonetheless.

Sirius wasn’t happy, but he was relieved in some ways.

In other ways, desperation coursed through him just as violently as before.

“Look at me,” Sirius snapped, roughly scraping vegetables off a chopping board into a pot before turning back to a startled looking Remus.

“What?”

“You don’t look at me anymore,” Sirius said, closing his eyes as he took in a breath, hoping to gather some semblance of control.

“I look at you,” Remus said quietly, but his gaze was distinctly not on Sirius.

“You don’t. You've done it maybe once,” Sirius countered, wincing at the break in his voice. “You don’t look at me, you don’t laugh with me, you don’t touch me. Why?’

“Well it’s hardly the time for laughing, is it?” Remus returned, jaw clenched, tone hard. “We’re not in the best position, are we? It’s been twelve fucking years.”

“And you didn’t have to spend them in Azkaban so forgive me if I don’t know what your problem is,” Sirius retorted, and he spun out of control again. He had never been moderated in a fight. “Twelve fucking years out in the world, no Voldemort, a potion to fix your problem. You think I wouldn’t have preferred that?”

“You think it’s been easy for me?” Remus sent back. “Everyone was gone. People kept telling me that it was your fault. And then that it was my fault.”

Sirius’ fury only built at that. How had the world been allowed to do this? How had this been allowed to happen? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised, really. For as long as he had known it, the world hadn’t been kind. It had been brutal and unforgiving and wholly cruel. No, the world was in no way kind.

Remus was kind though.

“Now of all times is when you decide to put yourself first? When I’ve spent twelve years locked away for something I didn’t do?” Sirius asked, voice snapping.

He was not kind. He had always struggled to be kind. And he knew that this would hurt Remus.

Good memories had been taken away from Sirius, but not these. Not these ones. Not the memories of their fights. Not the memories of their furies, bitter at the world and taking it out on each other. Remus avoided conflict like the plague, but when he chose to fight… Well, that was a different story.

James had told them once that he thought they might end up killing each other one day. Remus had laughed bitterly and said it would be fitting. Sirius had stormed away.

But maybe James was right. Because this anger that Sirius felt, it was overwhelming. And he loved Remus. He knew that much. He loved the man standing across from him with burning rage in his eyes. But he didn’t love what the world had made them and sometimes he didn’t know who he was except for that.

Sometimes he wondered if he could be anything but that.

Sirius had been thinking a lot in the past month. It had hurt.

“I’m not doing this with you, Sirius,” Remus said, all sharp words and edges, sounding like he very much wanted to do this. He was walking out the door before Sirius had a chance to say anything.

Sirius turned back to the stove and the oven. His fury bled out as he kneaded dough for bread. The only thing he had ever been able to multitask with was cooking. Euphemia had taught him years ago. He was grateful that his muscle memory hadn’t fallen away completely.

Sure, he nicked himself on the knife a couple of times and burnt himself taking the pie out of the oven. But he had cooked successfully.

And so when Remus came home far too late that night, Sirius jolted awake on the couch and they ate.

Remus didn’t look at him and Sirius didn’t ask him to. But they ate. And they ate facing each other and eventually they spoke.

They spoke words that Sirius wouldn’t remember in the morning with meanings that he would.

I’m sorry. I know, me too. I love you. I know, me too.

—

It had been six weeks since Sirius had moved in with Remus and the closest he’d been to “out” in that time was sitting on the window ledge in the living room. It had been nice, to feel the sun on his skin and the gentle summer breeze. He had done it a few times and now if he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that he wasn’t perched relatively precariously on a windowsill.

Distantly, he heard Remus unlocking the front door and kicking off his shoes. Sirius thought that it made it all the better, really. Eyes closed, pleasantly warm, hearing Remus come home. If he thought about it hard enough, he could almost pretend things were okay, this was how they had chosen to live and everything was going as planned.

Then he heard a distinctive thump of things dropped from Remus’ hands. “Sirius! What are you doing?” Remus asked frantically, a certain note of fear in his tone that Sirius couldn’t quite work out.

Sirius didn’t reply, he figured Remus would work it out soon enough. How many ways were there to describe sitting on a window ledge?

“Sirius. Padfoot. Please.” Remus’ voice broke. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know that none of this is far. I know that I haven’t been fair. But it’ll be over soon. I’m sure, I’m sure it’ll be better soon.”

And Remus sounded so frightened that Sirius hauled himself off the windowsill just to turn around and ask Remus what on earth was wrong. Only, when he did, there were tears on Remus’ cheeks and Sirius blanket. He hadn’t been expecting this. He had already been confused, but now he was really confused.

“Sirius. Fuck,” Remus said, exhaling, breath shaky. “Fuck. Fuck, don’t do that to me.”

Racking his mind for why Remus would react so badly to what was just a bit of fun, Sirius’ eyes widened as he realised. Coming home to find Sirius sitting on the windowsill, not responding was probably not Remus’ idea of things looking good. Particularly after the previous night when they had been discussing how much they wished they could just stop dealing with any of this. Sirius cringed at himself. It hadn’t even crossed his mind. He supposed that that was a good thing. It shouldn’t have crossed his mind.

He was surprised anyway.

“Oh Remus,” Sirius started softly. “No, that wasn’t it at all. I was just trying to get some sun,” he said, letting out a shaky laugh.

Remus rushed forward then. Lanky arms wrapped Sirius in the fiercest hug Sirius had ever experienced. Remus’ own breath was unsteady and he was murmuring things so low that Sirius didn’t have a chance of hearing them. He got the gist anyway. He didn’t think it mattered all that much in the end.

“Hey, hey,” Sirius soothed, holding Remus just as tightly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Remus dropped his head forward onto Sirius’ shoulder and sobbed.

“Remus. Moony. Hey. It’s okay,” Sirius promised. He was essentially holding Remus up now. He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough anymore, but there was no chance that he was going to let Remus fall. Not now. He wasn’t even sure whether he was ever going to let Remus go.

“Alright, alright. We’re going to move to the sofa now,” Sirius said, voice softer than he had managed to make it in a long time. When they were settled on the sofa, Remus’ hands still sat on Sirius’ arms and Sirius spoke again. “It wasn’t even a thought. I promise. It was never going to happen. I’m not leaving again.”

Remus shook even as he nodded. Slowly, he made to move away from Sirius before seemingly changing his mind. Instead, he ended up shifting to slot himself next to Sirius and laced their hands firmly together.

Sirius almost overloaded with sheer joy. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so happy and all it had taken was a bit of handholding. That being said, he had always been grateful for hand holding with Remus.

“I’m so sorry, Sirius,” Remus said, tone miserable even as his breathing finally slowed down. “You’ve had the most awful twelve years imaginable and you’ve come back and I’ve been awful.”

“You’ve not been awful,” Sirius countered, gripping Remus’ hands tighter. “But I’ve missed this.”

“What? Me crying all over you?”

“Yeah exactly,” Sirius replied, offering up a smile. “You.”

“I am sorry,” Remus repeated. He turned his head to look at Sirius properly and that was enough to make Sirius want to cry.

“I know,” Sirius said. “I am too.”

“I hate this.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But I’m glad you’re here,” Remus said, tone careful. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

Remus didn’t reply immediately. The quiet took over the room and Sirius thought that it might be the most comfortable quiet he had ever been in. Sitting there with Remus, with Remus’ hands in his. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt more relieved. He was pretty certain that Remus felt a similar way.

Something had shifted. Something had broken loose. Remus was touching him again.

“What are we going to do?” Remus asked, part caution, part desperation in his tone.

“I don’t know,” Sirius said honestly. “I don’t know. I’m not— I’m not the same anymore and I don’t think you are either. I want you again though. However that works.”

Sirius cringed at how blunt he sounded. How cliché, how childish. Remus deserved literature-level poetics. But language hadn’t been Sirius’ main focus in Azkaban. He was out of practice, to say the least. But if nothing else, he was clear.

Remus heaved in a shuddering breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I think we can manage that.”

“Good,” Sirius said, shaky and relieved. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am. I missed you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be.”

“Alright.”

—

Sirius had retreated to the guest bedroom for the first time in what had to be at least a couple of weeks. Remus was still sleeping. He looked so peaceful and so much younger in his sleep. Sirius still hadn’t gotten over how much older Remus looked now. It made sense, of course. It had been twelve years, and truthfully, they hadn’t seen all that much of each other in that last year. They had tried to, but it had been difficult. But now Remus looked far older than he should, even with the twelve years behind him. Sirius worried about Remus often these days.

But that wasn’t Sirius’ issue now. He wasn’t exactly sure what his problem was now, but he had been waiting for sleep and then he had been crying and he wasn’t entirely sure how he had jumped from one to the other.

He had never cried much. Not nearly as much as the other three. He supposed it had been beaten out of him. He supposed he’d learnt not to. He had cried, of course he had cried. But never as publicly as James and Peter. And never as often as Remus.

Not that it mattered, really. Whether he cried often or not had no impact, because he was crying now and no matter how many deep, shuddering breaths he took, he couldn’t seem to stop it. He closed his eyes and that hadn’t helped. He splashed his face with cold water and that hadn’t helped. So, he had slipped into the guest room and curled himself on the bed, too exhausted to even turn into Padfoot.

And that was probably it. He was exhausted. He shouldn’t be. He hadn’t done anything for the past however many weeks. He had been outside only a couple of times and only ever as Padfoot. Mostly, he had just been thinking. Thinking about the years he would never get back. Both from Azkaban and his childhood. Thinking about the people he would never get back. James and Lily, the Prewett brothers, Edgar. Caradoc and Benjy, Marlene and Dorcas. Truly, it had been remarkable that there were three gay couples in the Order.

Now there would only be one.

Sirius wondered how long they would last.

Sirius hoped that it would be forever. He had never wanted to live forever before. As much as he wouldn’t admit it, the mere idea of it had always sounded awful to him. But now, now he wanted to live forever with Remus just to spite the world. Just to spite everyone. His parents, Regulus, Dumbledore. He wanted Remus and he wanted them to have a chance to be free of all of this.

He had realised the other day that he had never experienced an adulthood where he wasn’t worried about a war. He had cried after that realisation as well. He had cried a lot recently. He had cried a lot and he had slept a lot and he had thought a lot.

None of it had been pleasant.

Sirius was struggling. He was struggling to work out what he could do now. He was struggling to work out how he could make the best of a truly awful situation. He was struggling to remember who he was at all.

That was what frightened Sirius the most.

Half the time he wasn’t sure who he was. He looked in the mirror and he understood that it was himself staring back at him, but it didn’t feel like him. He looked down at his hands and he understood that they were his and they were doing what he had told them to do, but they didn’t feel like his. He spoke sometimes and he sounded far away, he sounded like someone else, someone who Sirius had brushed by on the street but hadn’t stopped to have a proper conversation with. Remus said his name and it took Sirius a moment to realise that it was him being spoken to.

Sirius didn’t feel like Sirius. But most of all, Sirius didn’t feel like anyone.

It wasn’t all the time. And he liked to think that it was getting better. Sometimes he ran his hands through Remus’ hair and he felt perfectly himself, whoever that was, again. Sometimes he took a breath in while cooking and everything slotted into place. Sometimes Remus would come up to hug him from behind and Sirius would know who he was.

But often, Sirius didn’t feel like that. And while until now he hadn’t hidden out in the guest room since Remus had allowed him in his own, he spent most days existing in a strange space of his mind. Zoned out and unsure that he was even really there, he spent his days spacey and unstable.

Sirius didn’t hear Remus open the door and step into the room, but he did feel the mattress depress beside him as Remus sat next to him on the bed. Sirius closed his eyes tightly. He didn’t know how to tell Remus that he wasn’t Sirius at the moment, that he couldn’t be who Remus wanted him to be.

“It’s alright,” Remus whispered. “You’re alright.”

Sirius didn’t reply. He couldn’t reply. He didn’t know how. But he moved a hand behind him to grab at Remus’ knee in thanks.

Remus laid one hand over Sirius’ and threaded the other through Sirius’ hair. “If you want, I can braid it?”

Tears fell harder at that and Sirius wasn’t sure if he sobbed aloud or not, but he shifted into an upright position, slowly moving himself so he could slip off the mattress and onto the floor beside the bed. He curled his knees into his chest and brushed the tears off his face and wondered if he looked as much like a teenager as he felt.

“Are you sure?” He asked, eyes closed.

“I mean, I didn’t think you’d want now, but of course,” Remus replied easily and Sirius could hear the smile in Remus’ tone.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s alright.”

Sirius didn’t speak for awhile after that. Instead, he sat with the feeling of Remus combing through Sirius’ hair, detangling knots that Sirius hadn’t even properly realised were there. There was something intimate about it. Sirius’ hair had grown long, longer even than he used to keep it. It reached past his shoulders now and he hated the fact that it had come from Azkaban, but he kind of loved the fact that it took Remus longer to move through it.

When Remus started braiding, Sirius spoke.

“Do you hate me being here?” He asked.

“No,” Remus replied, voice gentle. “Why would I hate you being here?”

“It’s so different. I’m not… I don’t know what I am.”

“It was always going to be different, Pads,” Remus said softly, carding a hand through the loose hair. “And you’re you. You’re allowed to be different.”

“I kind of hate it,” Sirius said truthfully. He did hate it. He shouldn’t have to be so different. He shouldn’t have to deal with a life that had gone through what it had. He shouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life dealing with this.

“That’s fair enough too.”

“Is it awful?”

“Is what awful?”

“Who I am now.”

Sirius knew it was a stupid question to ask. It wasn't a question that anyone would ask. Not in normal circumstances, anyway. But these weren’t, were they? These were so clearly not normal circumstances. Nothing was normal anymore and he wanted to ask. He so desperately wanted to know what Remus thought of him.

Sirius couldn’t even work out what he thought of himself. Remus had always been the better judge of character anyway. And by far the most fair of any of them.

“Sirius,” Remus said on an exhale.

“Is it?”

“No,” Remus said, a gentle firmness in his tone as his fingers brushed against Sirius’ scalp, hands deftly working Sirius’ thick hair into a braid. “No, you’re not awful at all. You’re as wonderful as always. It’s just different now. But I’m different too, aren’t I? Do you think I’m awful?”

“No! No, of course not,” Sirius replied, pushing all the urgency into his voice that he could. “You could never be awful.”

“Neither could you,” Remus returned softly. “There you go, all done.”

Sirius reached a hand to his hair, letting his fingers trail down each fold of the braid. Once he found the end of the braid, he reached back for Remus’ calf, needing to know that he was really there, that this wasn’t just some extravagant hallucination.

“Thank you.”

“I’m always happy to,” Remus replied, letting his arms loop around Sirius’ neck. “However I can help.”

“You’re here.” Sirius wondered how long he would be allowed to say those words for. “That’s help.”

“You’re helping me too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Remus confirmed quietly.

“You didn’t ever… live with someone else?” Sirius asked cautiously, not knowing how carefully he needed to tread. He didn’t know how much Remus was ready to share. He couldn’t fuck this up now. Sirius released Remus’ calf and turned around to look at him in the silence.

“I tried,” Remus finally said. “I tried with roommates. I never really dated anyone long enough to move in with someone like that. But eventually, I just stopped trying. I like it anyway, in a sense, living alone. But it’s good to have you here.”

“I can leave.”

“Please don’t.”

“Okay.”

Sirius didn’t want to leave, but he would have left if that was what Remus had wanted. He couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t relieved that Remus didn’t want him to leave though. Sirius couldn’t think of a better place to spend the next however long, even if he had to spend it crying and thinking and not knowing who he was. He thought that maybe Remus coming home every afternoon and gentle nights would make up for it. At the very least, there would be Remus.

Sirius might not know who he was yet. He might not understand where he could go from here, if he was ever allowed to go from here. But if he had to live somewhere, then he wanted it to be here. He wanted it to be here, existing in this space. He wanted to exist with Remus. With the man who would forgive him for his outbursts, the man who could match Sirius in his anger, the man who would braid Sirius’ hair at a moment’s notice. The man who would wait and wait for Sirius to be okay.

Sirius knew that Remus wasn’t okay either. It was likely that neither of them would be “okay” for a long time. And as much as he longed for it, Sirius would never be seventeen and looking forward to the rest of his life again. But he would be with Remus and Remus would be with him and if they had to fight for every fucking day then they would.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sirius said softly.

Remus smiled, a blend between sad and accepting. “I’m glad you are.”