Work Text:
“I’m your fucking dog, you know that?” Sirius mumbles to Remus one morning, still only just awake with dreams of the two of them away on some beach still fresh on his mind. His voice is harsh, rough from sleep and from over a decade in prison. He knows it’ll never recover from that, he’ll never sound like how he used to but the bone-deep pain he feels for who he used to be has faded over the years.
Remus just sighs, his voice bleeding into his breath slightly as his mouth opens to speak but his brain’s not quite there yet, still fogged over from sleep. “Yeah,” eyes already blinking shut again, turning away from the light pouring in from the window and towards the crook of Sirius’s shoulder. His fingers creep around Sirius’s side to clutch down tight right below his ribs, digging in and making a home in the soft flesh between his bones, while his leg stretches forward to slot itself between Sirius’s own.
“Did you hear what I said?” Sirius isn’t sure why but it’s important that Remus knows what he’s telling him, that Remus understands that Sirius is his completely.
It’s been six months since the war ended, six months nearly to the day since Sirius saw Harry lying there limp, watched Remus get blasted by a barrage of curses. Six months since Sirius just fucking lost it in the middle of everything and killed six Death Eaters without so much as a second thought, cast curse after deadly curse until he was sure that the both of them were okay. It should be easier. Things should be easier. He should be able to wake up in the morning without reaching out in a panic, grasping for any sign of Remus with searching fingers. Harry should be able to leave the house, to walk into a crowd without feeling like he’s choking. Remus, for god’s sake, should be able to make it through the week without losing himself to the stars, chain-smoking and sat on their roof while he stares off into the night with dead eyes. But they’re not there yet.
A part of Sirius wonders if it’s just the three of them left. Maybe everyone else has put it behind them, buried their dead and their grieving and their ripped open chests and started their lives over again. But maybe, again, that’s the difference between the three of them and everyone else. They didn’t have anything before this. Going back to normal would mean Sirius rotting away in prison, Harry starving in a fucking cuboard, Remus drifting from place to place with whatever he can grab to keep him alive along the way. If they went back to how things were before, they’d end up worse off than dead.
“Yeah, dog, I got it,” voice muffled into the skin of Sirius’s neck. Remus stretches once, body long and taut against Sirius’s, burrowing deeper into the pillow but Sirius places one hand on Remus’s head and the other on his neck, cradles his face as he pulls him back a bit.
“I’m yours. Always.You, you and Harry, that’s all I have. You know that?” Sirius feels the sound of affirmation Remus makes in his throat, the vibrations just below his fingertips. Remus blinks open one eye then, squinting a little in the still dim room.
“Yes, I know,” he says simply. And then, “your breath stinks,” as he leans into Sirius’s fingers threaded through his hair, but he’s smiling, just a touch, and turns, wraps an arm around Sirius’s neck to wrangle him down on top of him. Sirius grins a little into Remuss chest, shaking his head and digging his fingers in deep. He wishes they could sink into his flesh like wet soil, like claws into skin, sink his whole body into Remus's until they fused together.
It’s not healthy, what they have. Sirius knows it. They lean on each other too much, spend every possible moment with each other. Sirius doesn’t have the words for how much he needs Remus, how he feels like he’d like to carve out a space for himself in the meat of Remus’s ribs. He feels the pathetic sort of desperation in Remus’s clenching fingers when they grasp onto him at night. It’s not healthy, but it’s keeping them alive.
He feels it now, although softer, in the way Remus’s thumb presses into the paper-thin skin of his neck, right below his jaw, and he knows he’s feeling his heart beat, making sure that Sirius is there, alive and breathing. Sirius grits his teeth just barely, a brief clench of his jaw when Remus thumbs down a touch harder but of course Remus picks up on it, taking his hand away for a moment before adjusting to cover Sirius’s whole neck, soft still but there .
They’ve been doing this more lately. They messed around with this what felt like eons ago but that felt nothing like this. There was always intent to hurt then, though Sirius isn’t sure if either one of them was cognizant of it. It was only about power then, not trust at all but power and cathartic sex . Let me wrap my fingers around your neck, pressing down on your airways, binding your wrists to the wall so you couldn’t get away even if you wanted to. Sirius is sure part of it is a power thing now as well, but differently than before. This isn’t about their ability to hurt one another as much as it’s about the power they’re handing over to the other, the knowledge that they could overpower the other and yet they don’t. It’s certainly still about sex now, but it’s also a reminder outside of that, a mark of Sirius's pulse beneath Remus's fingers and Remus's breath on Sirius's neck.
It doesn’t seem like there’s been too much in Sirius’s life that he could comfortably rely on, that he could trust would be there day after day for him. Remus, though, is still here. By some fucking miracle or another, they still have each other. And isn’t that something to worship, to celebrate with their whole beings, that the two of them are still here.
“Can you -” Sirius starts, thinking about his words before he says them. “More,” he says softly before clearing his throat, “just...harder, more, please.”
Remus squeezes just once before he pulls Sirius’s head off his chest to stare down at him in the dimly lit room, eyes searching for something. Sirius's breath catches at the suddenness of it all, his touch so firmly there and now just lightly pressing. “What’s wrong,” he asks after a moment of studying, hand now gripping loosely at Sirius’s throat.
“Nothing.” The words are immediate without much thought behind them. Not quite a lie but a simple answer for this early in the morning. Remus just looks at him, though, moves the hand from his neck to brush the hair back from Sirius’s face so that he can better see his eyes. Remus has always been able to do this, to will an answer out of him with a look and an uncomfortable stretch of silence. “I just...I thought we’d be better by now.”
“What do you mean?” Remus slides his hand back, rubbing his thumb against the bump of Sirius’s Adam's apple in a sort of grounding reminder.
“Just the three of us. Thought we’d be back to how we should be. Not...existing like half-formed people, sort of always desperately grabbing at something.” He takes a sort of deep shuddering breath, full of a panic he didn’t know he was holding, a panic that their life will always be this poorly pieced together thing with only each other to rest upon.
“Come on,” Remus says surely after a moment, pushing back the blankets and pulling SIrius by the hand to the closet.
“What are we doing?”
He turns his head to smile a little softly as he digs through a small mess of clutter at the foot of the closet, back by the shoes. “Giving you a Christmas gift.” He lets go of Sirius’s hand to pull out a ring-sized box. Sirius raises an eyebrow at him but Remus only shakes his head and mutters a spell and the box grows larger. Sirius takes it and is shocked by the weight of it.
“It’s November.”
Remus shrugs. “Late birthday gift then. I’m shit at keeping things from you anyway, just open it.”
Sirius lowers himself to the floor to sit cross-legged in front of the box, slowly and carefully pulling the wrapping paper off without ripping a bit of it, half because he likes to keep the paper to remind him of the occasion and half because he knows it makes Remus inpatient. He exhales out his nose in a laugh when Remus crosses his arms and rolls his eyes but moves a little quicker to pull whatever it is out of the box. He takes the soft fabric in his hand and pulls; it looks like a comforter for their bed but it’s much heavier. He blinks up at Remus.
“It’s a weighted blanket, weighs about nine kilograms. It’s supposed to be good for...well, here, let me show you.” Remus takes the blanket out of the box fully with only a little struggle and leads Sirius into the living room. The sun only just lights the room from a crack in the drapes. He sits leaning up against the sofa and pats the space between his legs and Sirius follows, settling himself between Remus’s thighs and resting his head back against the hard jut of his collarbone. “Alright?” Remus mumbles in his ear.
Sirius nods, smiling up at him but the breath leaves his lungs when Remus pulls the blanket up into his lap, draping it across his shoulders. The effect is immediate, heavy and grounding and pushing him back against Remus. “Oh,” he says, a little shocked at the feeling of it all. “This...yes, this is…”
“It’s what you wanted?” Remus takes Sirius’s chin lightly in his hand and strokes against the line of his jaw. “Not too much?” There's something nurturing in his eyes and Sirius spares a thought in passing for the children they never got to raise together.
"Yes," Sirius turns his head to press a kiss to the skin of Remus's neck. He pulls at Remus's arms so that they come to wrap around him, encircled by Remus's embrace and his thighs on either side with the heavy press of the blanket anchoring them both together. "Yes, this is perfect."
They turn on the television and let it drone on in the background but Sirius is only half-paying attention to whatever rerun is on. He rests his head back against Remus's chest and listens to his breath and he falls back asleep. Soon Harry will be up and they'll eat breakfast together, maybe at the table, maybe here on the floor in front of the television. And surely they'll run into trouble tomorrow when they have to run out for groceries or maybe tonight when they try to fall asleep. But for the moment, things are alright and that's all that Sirius can hope for.