Chapter Text
it’s far too late in the evening for someone to be knocking at the door, and yet remus’ ears perk up to the sound as he’s dressing harry in his favourite dinosaur pyjamas. he pulls the shirt over his head, calling “coming!” over his shoulder before lifting the boy up on his hip, making his way through the apartment.
he nearly shuts the door right after he opens it.
“hey, moony,” sirius says, his voice somehow hoarse as he manages a small smile, hesitation lingering behind his irises.
sirius’ gaze immediately drifts to harry, three years older than he last saw him and still recognizable as ever; but remus’ eyes stay on him; a living, breathing sirius black, who somehow thought it was best to show up to his apartment after three years of being nowhere to be found- no letters, no rumours, not even a smoke signal.
before he can even finish processing a dead man at his doorstep, harry has wiggled out of his arms and ran out into the hallway to cling to sirius’ leg with a delighted little cry of “padfoot!”
remus stands awkwardly where he is, now without anything to do with his hands. sirius ruffles harry’s hair, laughing quietly to himself before looking back up at remus. and he’s so familiar. he’s a stranger, now, has been a stranger for at least two years, if he counted the year in which he was in denial- checking his mailbox every day, making his apartment more accessible for owls- and yet he’s so familiar when he looks back at remus that it nearly makes him sick.
it does, really. just a little. his mouth runs dry. it makes his throat hurt.
“can padfoot come in, moony?” harry asks, all excitement and obliviousness to the way remus is staring at sirius as if he’s stabbed him, or if remus considering whether or not to stab him himself.
sirius says nothing in protest. surely he came here for a reason, but somehow, remus feels a pang of resentment when he doesn’t turn to leave.
“i suppose,” he begins to say, before harry is pulling sirius into the apartment and he has to step aside.
he doesn’t miss the way sirius surveys the room; the tattered, single couch; the small, matching coffee and dining room tables; the worn rug; the sparse kitchen merged with the living room. remus can’t discern what reaction he has to it, but he feels the need to remind himself that he doesn’t care.
harry tugs at the hem of remus’ sweater, looking up at him curiously. “it’s padfoot, moony,” he almost whispers, concern etching itself into his tiny face, as if he was expecting more of a reaction from him and was worried when there wasn’t one.
remus looks down at him, nodding a little and exhaling from deep in his chest- defeated, almost. “c’mon, harry. bedtime.” he says, instead, scooping harry up into his arms- who pouts slightly, pulling at the neckline of his sweater.
“i want padfoot to tuck me in, moony.” he says softly, as if it’s a secret.
remus doesn’t smile, he only looks over at sirius for a second- the stranger, the silhouette he had memorized the outline of and yet doesn’t recognize- and sighs quietly, reluctantly setting harry down. “alright. no stalling, though. you’re already up late.”
sirius takes harry’s hand as he goes up on his toes to grab his own in his tiny fingers, tugging him towards the hallway. “i wanna show you my room, padfoot!” he exclaims, delighted.
the room isn’t very big, by any means, but it’s the biggest one in the house besides the joint living-room-dining-room-kitchen. a small, twin-sized bed with blue covers pattened with cartoonish planets sits in the corner, and lining the wall there’s a small bookcase with well-loved books, and a drawer full of second-hand toys. there are glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, held up by mostly dried out blu-tack.
harry flicks on a lamp beside his bed before climbing into bed, shoving the covers back and leaving room for sirius to sit- which he does, ever enthralled by the boy’s endless energy.
“do you want me to read you a story?” sirius asks, the blaringly obvious fact that he doesn’t even know what harry likes anymore clear in his mind. (he used to like sirius to read to him when he was a toddler. he remembers him liking all the sound effects he made.)
but harry shakes his head. “i’ve read all of them lotsa times. and i’m a big boy now! i don’t need a bedtime story, padfoot.” he seems almost offended, in his own four year old way, that sirius would think so.
sirius laughs, ruffling harry’s mop of messy black hair before pulling the covers up over him, tucking it in slightly around his small frame. “if you say so, prongslet. but big boys are still allowed to be read stories sometimes, y’know?”
“i know. i still let moony read me stories, when i’m really sleepy.” harry says, nodding once. he shifts a bit under the covers, his face dawning a newer, more sombre expression. as serious as a four year old could get, really. he nudges sirius with his foot under the blanket, reaching out to poke him on the shoulder, sitting up slightly.
sirius, who had been trying to read the spines of the worn books from where he was sitting, perked up, looking towards him again. “hm?”
“you made moony cry, padfoot.” harry says quietly, his tone having changed significantly from moments before. he pulls the blankets back up to his chin, looking up at sirius, his little green eyes full of some caring, sweet kindness.
sirius can only blink, smoothing his hands out over the top of the comforter. the simpleness of which he said it makes it that much harder to believe, or even to understand. “what do you mean?”
“he told me it wasn’t you, but i knew it was. he missed you a lot. it made him sad.” his face scrunched up in determination, like he knew he was fixing everything by telling him this, like he had so much hope in sirius to help him make it up to remus. “you gotta say sorry to him, padfoot. it’s not nice to make people cry.”
there’s a clenching in sirius’ heart that he doesn’t have a name for. it rattles around his chest, making his mouth run dry, and he almost can’t reply to harry. but he manages to smile at him, despite the guilt making his blood go cold, and tucks him in properly.
“i’ll apologize to him, prongslet. i’ll do it right now, after you go to sleep.”
“promise?” harry reaches out to grab sirius’ pinky in his own hand, squeezing it.
“promise.”
he seems content with this, nodding and letting go of sirius’ hand, settling back in under the covers. “love you, padfoot.”
“love you. sleep well.” sirius kisses harry’s forehead once, before patting the top of the comforter and turning the lamp off, closing the door as quietly as he can behind him.
guilt resurfaces at the back of his throat like bile, and he digs his fingernails into his palms, seeking solace in the burning of the crescent moon markings they leave. this is going to be the hardest part, he knows. facing remus without harry as a crutch. it wasn’t any easier when he was there, but now he knows he’ll have to look remus in the face- remus and his weary eyes, remus and his shaky hands, remus and his familiarity that still shines through under all the years where he had to grow up too fast. and he doesn’t know if he’s ready.
remus is making tea when he emerges into the main living space, going through the movements like clockwork. even though sirius didn’t make a sound entering, he knows he realizes he’s there; he used to tease him about it in school, a little game to test how his wolf senses had completely integrated into his sense of being. he doesn’t feel like teasing him now. he doesn’t breathe.
wordlessly, he sits down at the dining table, watching remus from behind the counter. despite everything in his posture screaming that he would rather have anyone else in his living room but sirius, he still pulls out two mugs.
he notices him adding four sugars. somehow, it only makes the guilt twist his stomach up in knots even further. (because he knows him. he’s treating sirius like a stranger and yet, he knows he’s never been one for tea, and he knows he takes four sugars and too much milk because he’ll never refuse a cup, anyhow.)
“harry says i made you cry.” he doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be. a reach for the past, maybe. when the both of them would deny the tears streaming down their cheeks with jokes and elbows in their sides.
but remus doesn’t laugh. his hand pauses on the handle of the kettle before he moves again like it’s no big deal, but sirius can tell from where he’s sitting that remus’ shoulders are tense like no other.
“you made a lot of people cry.” he sounds bitter. sirius can guess why. he’s been bitter all evening, and sirius can’t really blame him, either.
there are many things he wants to say. above all, he wants to say, i’m sorry, and he wants to mean it. but apologies have never come easy to sirius black and it’s twice, three times as hard when he’s looking in the face of someone who he loves so much and seems to want nothing to do with him.
but the words don’t come. they sit in silence with remus’ back to him and his bitter voice hanging over their head, weighing heavy on their shoulders. or at least, on sirius’. he wouldn’t know with remus. he’d been shouldering everything with a straight face his entire life and sirius can’t recognize what truly hurts him anymore.
(except he can. he knows exactly what to say if he wants to hurt remus where it matters; and he won’t, but the line you cross when you love someone wholly and completely is knowing how. he knows how the band of remus’ tense shoulders shifts when he’s hurt, he knows the bite at the end of his sentences when he grows fed up with someone. he recognizes it now. except it isn’t frustration. it’s plain hurt, outlining his spine, his wrists, his jaw.)
sirius doesn’t try to say anything else. he simply settles into the silence remus definitely seems to prefer, and memorizes the pattern on the back of his sweater.
remus comes to sit with two mugs; his tea plain with one sugar, a stark contrast to sirius’. he doesn’t need to taste it to tell. remus is a walking sentimentality and with him, all the little things that make him up are carried on, tied up in a tattered bow. sirius used to be able to make it unravel, or maybe just loosen, on good days. if anything, now, it seems to have tied itself tighter.
it’s strange, how sitting beside a werewolf reminds sirius of his humanity.
and he doesn’t say don’t you want to know where i was , no matter how much he wants to, because he knows remus doesn’t. remus has never been a man for excuses and sirius has stopped giving them, not when he doesn’t have to. it was the first thing remus had changed about him. and even though it’s an explanation, it’s an excuse just as much, and so sirius keeps his mouth pressed into a thin line until he can think of something better to say.
sirius looks at remus. remus looks into his mug. (he’s 24 but his eyes are older, and there’s no longer a little bit of gold in the honey-brown.)
their hands brush on the handles of their mugs from where they’re sitting, at remus’ tiny little dining table with only two chairs. it sends sparks shooting through sirius’ body like when they were 16, new to the world of love and hardship. which is half a lie, always had been, because neither of them were even remotely new to a world of hardship. perhaps that’s what drew them together then and pushed them apart now.
sirius kisses him, because he is an impulsive man who craves things he wants and cannot rest without having. and remus doesn’t kiss him back so much as he just lets him do it, because he is a man of poise and above all, he is polite. (sirius doesn’t know why remus only kissing him because of politeness makes everything hurt more, but it does. merlin, it does.)
he wants to say something when they part, something about how remus’ hands are still so perfectly curled around his mug, about how he is still sitting perfectly still and sirius has an urge to get up and go somewhere, but remus beats him to it.
“i think you should leave.”
it’s not anything near to what sirius wanted him to say.
he should argue with him, he knows. he needs to stay and explain himself to him, he needs to take that kiss back, he needs to sit with how remus still tastes the same- like chocolate mint tea and early mornings- just for a little longer.
but he doesn’t. sirius stands and leaves his tea untouched on the table, steam still blowing off of it, and murmurs a barely audible thank you. remus doesn’t answer, staring holes into the wood of the table.
sirius would like to say that he hesitated at the door. he would like to say that remus came after him, too, or at the very least changed his mind and asked him to stay. but he didn’t. he exited the apartment building out onto the bleary, grey streets in nothing but his faded leather jacket and ducked his head down, ignoring the way his lips still tingled for hours afterward.