Chapter Text
Day One
The other man had arrived before Remus and was busy with the work of setting up the cameras. He whistled tunelessly between his teeth as he rigged them ready for the long weeks ahead. Remus tried to swallow down his anxiety. After all, they were bound to be friends soon, living in such close proximity. Besides, they might only have to be there for a few days.
“Um, hello.” Inwardly, he cursed himself for the ‘um’. Hadn’t he been taught not to start sentences with ‘um’?
The man didn’t turn around but he bobbed at the hips in a gesture Remus could not unravel. “Morning. Gimmee a sec.”
Remus waited patiently. The man (Mr Black, was it? He had read the paperwork so many times, memorised every detail, yet still he doubted himself) was bent over at the waist, fiddling with some wires. He started whistling again.
“Damn!” He stood up quickly and turned around. “Bloody clip’s gone. Always the way.”
He was younger than Remus had been expecting. Somehow, he had pictured a middle-aged man, quiet and sedate, the sort of unruffled presence who would think nothing of watching cameras for hours on end or fussing over delicate equipment. Mr Black was very much not that. He had a tapered torso like somebody you would see frowning down at you from the side of a bus, and he wore his hair to his shoulders like a Medieval prince. Definitely not middle-aged. Definitely not sedate.
“You must be Remus – I can call you Remus, right?”
Remus, who had spent years fighting for the barest courtesy of ‘Mr Lupin’ and who longed with all his heart to become ‘Dr’, saw no conceivable way to argue. “Of course. Pleased to meet you, Mr Black.”
He offered his hand to shake. Mr Black stared at it like he had never run across the custom before. Then he grinned and shook rather too heartily, gripping Remus’s hand like he expected to crush the bones.
“Sirius. Mr Black makes me sound like I teach geography.”
“Oh, um, sure. Okay. Sirius.”
Sirius released him and whirled around, heading over to one of the many vast black bags he had strewn around the room. “Need a new clip. Good thing I keep about a thousand of the things, eh? Always breaking.”
“Yes. Um, yes. Very forward thinking of you.”
Remus knew he was handling this badly but whatever secret script or rhythm was supposed to dictate the initial small talk was beyond him. His mind was blank of anything sensible to say. Sirius, at least, did not appear to notice.
“So, you’re one of those academic chaps?”
“I…yes, you could say that. I’m studying for my PHD in…”
“Oh, you’re gonna be a doctor?”
“Hopefully.” Remus could feel himself blushing at the very mention of his deepest desire. “Someday.”
“Cool, cool. Bet you’re a wizard at pub quizzes.”
Sirius bent back over his camera to perform whatever mysterious task had required the new clip. Remus’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a pub quiz.”
“Oh, really? Well, sure. I’m more of a clubbing guy myself too.”
“I don’t really…I mean…” Remus wanted to sink into the floor and die. It had all gone horribly wrong. This ordeal was not going to be survivable. He should call for backup now, surrender this opportunity, give up on his dreams, and start a new identity somewhere else. It was all over.
“You’re from Oxford, right?”
“I study there,” Remus agreed. “I’m actually from Sussex.”
“Oh, like Brighton? Great clubs in Brighton. Ever been to Shuffle? Amazing fun. Went there with a friend a while back.”
“Not really Brighton. More Rottingdean?”
Sirius managed to shrug whilst still stooped over a camera. “No idea. Sorry.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t…it’s just one of the little villages round there. Very rural. No one’s ever heard of it.”
“Oh, right. Sure. Country boy, then.”
“I guess so.”
Whatever task Sirius was engaged in was apparently completed because he stood back and nodded with a satisfied smile. With deft fingers, he began to untangle a spool of cable, spreading it out in rows across the empty floor.
“Um…” Remus wracked his brains for the half-scribbled notes in teenage journals on how to hold a proper conversation. “So where are you from?”
“London.”
“Oh, which part?” Remus knew about London.
“Islington.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know anything about Islington. “Um, must be nice, living in London. Easy access to the sights and all that.”
“To be honest, it’s probably just as quick getting anywhere important from Oxford as it is from Islington. Tube’s a nightmare, man.”
Remus made a vague noise of agreement. It seemed as though the back of his brain had dropped away. All the little mental programmers who usually worked so hard at their desks had vanished. His mind was an empty office, and the filing cabinets were not alphabetised.
“Aha!” Sirius plugged a final cable into one of the vast computer displays perched haphazardly at the edge of the room. The screens flickered blue and shuddered into life. A perfect image of the mountainside outside appeared, each one showing a different magnification or angle. “There! All set up for you, mate.”
“Thank you. This will be perfect.”
“You better believe it will be. See all the snow leopards you want there.”
It was strange, not to mention pathetic, just how grateful Remus was. He was often that way. There was something about people who could actually do things, useful things, like DIY or coding, that made him miserably admiring. He couldn’t understand how they managed it. He always felt this thoroughly unnecessary desire to throw himself down at their feet and beg they teach him the arcane secrets of spark plugs and HTML.
Sirius turned and grinned at him. It was a slightly dangerous grin, marked by a chipped tooth and a twist to the lip that was almost unpleasant. The eyes sparkled. He was wearing make-up, Remus realised – he was actually wearing make-up. Who wore make-up to set up cameras in a remote research facility?
“So, you do a lot of this?”
Remus shuddered against his will, like he always did when he was pulled sharply from thoughts into action. “A lot of what?”
“You know…” Sirius gestured vaguely around. “Animal watching.”
“Oh. Well, I’ve certainly done a lot of field work. Nothing quite like this though.”
“Going to be a documentary, right? BBC or whatever?”
Remus nodded, wondering whether or not this man had even read the paperwork. “Yes. Focusing on vulnerable species.”
“Love a good nature documentary. That bit there always is where, like, they start fighting and there’s this music and you’re not quite sure where it’s gonna go next? Cos it’s real life, you know, so it’s not like they’ve scripted it to be all okay. Love that.”
Remus smiled and sought desperately for a response.
“You’ll be the voice guy then? ‘Here we see the rare lesser-spotted blue toucan’, blah blah blah?”
The ‘blah blah blah’ hurt but Remus didn’t think it would be sensible to say so at this point.
“Oh no. No, I won’t be the…the voice guy. I’m just here to make sure we get the footage. They’ve got somebody else to do the actual narration. Attenborough, I think.”
“Doesn’t seem right. You’re the one sitting in this bloody bunker for weeks on end. Ought to be you doing the talking bit too.”
Remus couldn’t help but smile. He was, bizarrely, touched. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t say so. You need somebody with prestige for that sort of thing. And, of course, this does help me with my thesis so –”
“Still doesn’t seem right. Figure the one doing the work ought to get to do the story part.” Sirius glanced at the screens. “Right. Cup of coffee?”
“Oh, um, that would be lovely, um…”
“Right.”
He left. Remus perched on the edge of the narrow, sagging sofa and stared at the screens. Would it be acceptable to chase after Sirius and let him know how he took his coffee? Probably not. Best just to go with it. Things were going badly enough as it was. He fixed his eyes hard on the mountainside and tried to will a snow leopard into existence. He wasn’t sure he could do this two days, let alone the months he might be trapped here.
By the time Sirius returned, the snow leopards had not been kind enough to appear. Remus accepted a mug and tried to sip the coffee with every appearance of pleasure. There was a half-hearted dash of milk in there but not a trace of sugar. The bitterness almost made his eyes water.
“So, um,” he fumbled for a conversation topic, “are you interested in snow leopards?”
“Not really an animal kind of person. Only took the gig because the pay’s good. And I wanted to get out of town for a bit.” Sirius took a long gulp of coffee. “Bad break-up. You know how it is.”
“Oh, um…” Remus did not know how it was but he tried to appear sympathetic.
“Got a girlfriend?”
“Um, no, I, um…” He’s wearing eyeliner, Remus reminded himself angrily, even as his face flushed humiliatingly red. You’re probably safe. “Gay, actually.”
Sirius nodded, apparently untroubled. “Right, sorry. Boyfriend?”
“No. Not at the moment.”
Not ever, if it came to it, but there are some things you don’t say to people you’ve only just met. Or anybody at all, in Remus’s view. The time for being endearingly naive was long past and he was now stepping firmly into the part of his life where his lack of meaningful life experiences was painfully embarrassing.
“So what do you do when you’re not watching snow leopards?”
Remus wracked his brain for a suitable answer. “I…read about snow leopards? My thesis kind of takes up most of my life right now.”
Sirius drained his coffee cup in what Remus could only take to be an attempt to avoid responding to that.
“How about you? What’s…what do you do normally?”
“Oh, just normal things. I like building things – old cars, you know. Play football – strictly amateur and all that, but it’s good fun. Do you honestly not have any hobbies?”
“Oh, well, I…I have a bike? Sometimes I take it out on weekends, you know, out into the countryside.”
Sirius’s face lit up like a lamp. “Oh, bikes, sure! What kind?”
Remus’s heart flipflopped in desperate relief. This was something he knew about. He could do this!
“It’s a Decathlon Triban 520 Disc! It’s new – I’ve only just bought it, I’ve had my eye on one for ages! It’s aluminium frame, 28mm tires, and I’ve just realised you were thinking of motorbikes, weren’t you?”
“I was, yeah.” Sirius gave him a look that made Remus want to sink into the cool earth and die. “But road cycling is cool.”
“Yeah.” Remus wished he had never been born. Why was he trapped in a bunker in the mountains with a man who seemed to embody every detail of the boys who had made his life a misery at school? “Um…so you like motorbikes?”
“Yeah, I fixed up this lovely vintage piece years ago. Runs like a dream.”
The conversation dwindled to silence. Remus took another brave sip of coffee and managed to keep his face from twisting in disgust. He focused on the screens, hoping to cover his awkwardness with a display of intent animal watching.
“So, Sussex,” Sirius attempted. “You must be an Albion supporter, right?”
“I guess.” Remus ducked his head to try and cover his sudden desire to cry. “I’ve never actually, you know, been to a football game. It’s not really my thing.”
“Oh.”
The pause stretched on.
“I’ve played tennis,” Remus ventured, not letting on that this had only been twice when his professor had needed a partner for a doubles tournament and had bullied him into it.
“Never really seen the point of tennis.”
“No. Yeah. Okay.”
There was another pause. This one lasted several minutes.
“You watch much telly?” Sirius attempted. “I’m really into Law of Physics right now. Have you seen…?”
“I haven’t really seen any television in the past six years except reruns of Inspector Morse.”
“No. Figures.”
Remus’s stomach curled. He wondered if it was possible for blood to curdle in the heart. It felt that way. He hadn’t felt this insecure since he left sixth form and all the horrors thereof behind.
“How soon are we likely to see a leopard?” Sirius asked abruptly.
“Could be any time,” Remus managed through the blood roaring in his ears. “Three minutes from now or…or three weeks.”
“Ah.” Sirius stood up. “I’m going to pour myself another coffee.”
Day Three
They had fallen into an uncomfortable sort of routine. They spent most of their time watching the screens. Ostensibly they had narrow little bunk rooms to sleep in but Remus hadn’t spent a night there yet. He dozed off lying on the floor in front of the screens, watching them until it felt as though his eyes were bleeding.
Sirius wandered around, making endless cups of coffee and whistling until Remus wanted to slap him. He seemed to be gradually shedding layers of clothing. The make-up stayed but the shirt and jacket had disappeared in favour of a loose t-shirt with fraying seams. The jeans became, if conceivable, tighter.
For what it was worth, Sirius did not seem interested in antagonising him. Whenever they ended up in the same space, which was often in so small a bunker, he made vague attempts at conversation, which Remus in turn attempted to reciprocate. It was not going well.
“How about chess?” Remus had ventured, on the evening of the first day. “Do you play chess?”
“Never figured out the point. Pawns have the power of numbers – they ought to win every time.”
On the morning of the second day, Sirius had attempted to start a conversation about some celebrity gossip, but Remus hadn’t understood it. He had tried to make up for it by opening for discussion the latest political scandal, but Sirius had stamped that down immediately, the only time he had actively refused to engage. Throughout the day, they had tossed even the slimmest shreds of thought back and forth, desperately seeking something they might have in common. They hadn’t found it.
So far, by midday of the third day, Remus had had no interaction with Sirius except for the mug of coffee brought to him around breakfast time. Sirius was very generous about the making of coffee, never failing to make two cups whenever he wanted one, but still Remus was living in a world without sugar and it was killing him.
“You sit that close to the screen, your eyes will go rectangular,” Sirius remarked, from directly behind him.
Remus jumped out of his skin. He span around, misjudged it, and fell back on his elbow. Sirius stood over him, holding yet another cup of coffee, looking at him as though he were a shrunken head behind museum glass.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. Just what my aunt used to say.” He held out the coffee cup. “Might as well sit on the sofa. Get just as good a view from there.”
“Oh…yeah.” Remus accepted the coffee and took a gulp to cover his awkwardness. “I thought I saw something and wanted a closer look and –”
“Do you take sugar?” Sirius interrupted.
Remus’s stomach swooped. “What?”
“In your coffee. Do you take sugar?”
“I, um, well, that is, I mean, um, y-well, I don’t, I mean to say, I only…”
“Okay, didn’t realise it was such a big question.” Sirius flung himself onto the sofa, managing with remarkable skill not to spill a drop of liquid from the violently sloshing mug. “Let me know when you have an answer.”
“I usually have a little sugar,” Remus managed to get out. “I mean, customarily.”
“Shit.” Sirius stood up again. “Give it here – there’s some in the kitchen.”
“Oh, no!” Remus clutched the mug to him like it was his firstborn child. “It’s alright!”
“Your face screwed up like I’d fed you arsenic. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Oh, well, you’d been so kind, making me coffee, I didn’t want to be any trouble, I can drink it without sugar, after all, in fact it’s probably better for me, doing me a favour really, cutting down on my sugar, I mean to say,” Remus gabbled.
“Mate, what are you on?” Sirius snapped his fingers. “It’s no trouble to put sugar in a cup. Give it here.”
“It’s okay.” Remus scrambled to his feet, managing in the process to spill scalding hot coffee all down his front. “I can get it.”
“Oh my god.” Sirius stared at him as though he had lost his mind. “I’m not offended cos you take sugar. Give me the cup and go change your shirt.”
“It’s fine, really, it’s –”
“Are you mental?”
“Probably.”
It was out before Remus could stop it but, even as his ears burned, Sirius only grinned.
“Bloody academics,” he said, but not unkindly. “Get changed and give me the damn mug. How many sugars do you usually have?”
“Just the one –”
“Sounds like a lie.”
“Three.” Remus gave up. “I usually have three.”
“That’ll rot your teeth.”
“I know! That’s why I was saying, it’s a good thing that you –”
“Jesus, mate, I’m teasing you. Breathe.” Sirius swooped in and plucked the mug from Remus’s unresisting hand. “And seriously, put a clean shirt on. Coffee stains – you’re gonna want to rinse that one.”
He left the room without another word. Remus took a second to try and steady himself, and headed to his bunk room. It was the size of a cupboard, with a narrow plank of a bed, the sort you might expect to see in a houseboat, taking up almost all the space there was. His clothes were still in his suitcase. He pulled out a fresh shirt and held it up. It was creased as a pocket handkerchief. It looked as though he had been using it to scrub the floor.
And that was the reason – that and the fact that there was no space in the bunk room for an ironing board – that when Sirius returned with a fresh cup of coffee, Remus was standing shirtless in front of the sofa ironing his shirt. The cameraman leant against the door frame, watching him.
“Domestic,” he commented.
Remus looked up sharply from navigating a tricky cuff and wished he could die where he stood. He dropped the iron sharply and wrapped his arms around himself. Nobody had seen him undressed in years and here he was, in front of this man, in this space, what must he think? What must he be assuming?
“Whoa!” Sirius hastily put the mug down and rushed across the room to grab the iron before it burned a hole in Remus’s fresh shirt. “Chill out. What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry! It was just, there’s no room in the bunk room to set up an ironing board and –”
“Yeah, no, I got that. I just…why are you ironing a shirt?”
“All my clean shirts were crumpled. There’s no room to hang things!”
Remus wrapped his arms tighter around himself, fingernails biting crescents into his upper arms. Sirius’s eyes flickered to them momentarily, and he set the iron down carefully on its end and stepped back.
“Okay, sure. But you’re not going to a meeting or anything. You can wear a creased shirt. Hell, you can wear a t-shirt – what’s with all the button downs?”
“I don’t even own a t-shirt!” Even to his own ears, Remus sounded hysterical.
“Okay.” Sirius spoke slowly and calmly, like you would speak to an animal in a trap. “So I’m going to step back into the kitchen for a minute so you can iron your shirt in peace. Okay?”
He did just that. Remus stood alone and dug his nails in harder, till they almost drew blood. Then he ironed his shirt.
When Sirius returned, some minutes later, Remus was sitting on the sofa cross-legged, coffee mug gripped in his hands, staring unseeingly ahead of him. His freshly ironed shirt was still hot against his skin. He felt rather than saw Sirius sit down at the other end of the sofa, as far away from him as possible. He braced himself for the attack.
“Anxiety,” Sirius said calmly.
Remus was too confused to be alarmed. “Huh?”
“You have anxiety.”
“I…yeah.” The word fell out of Remus’s mouth on the exhale, involuntary. “Yeah. I have anxiety.”
“Makes sense. Thought you might but…” There was a pause. “Sorry I scared you.”
“Oh, no!” Remus’s face burned crimson. “I’m sorry I’m being so… You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s my fault for being…”
“Mmm. You don’t have to do that. Like, I get that it’s practically a compulsion but you don’t have to do that. The apology thing.”
There was a pause as Remus tried to think of anything to say that wasn’t just another apology.
“My brother has anxiety,” Sirius said abruptly.
That derailed every line of thought. “What?”
“My little brother. Diagnosed when he was eighteen. He’s doing better now. Well, he was last I heard. What I’m saying is, I get it. I mean, I don’t get it, like, I’ve never had it, but I know…it’s cool. That’s what I’m saying. It’s cool. There’s not a problem here.”
There were so many problems everywhere, more than Remus could list.
“I, um, I’m sorry about your brother. I’m glad he’s doing okay.”
“Yeah.” Sirius paused. “You on meds or anything?”
“I have tablets. They help.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sirius nodding. The tension in the air was like iron but, somehow, Remus felt safer than he had done since he arrived.
“Let me know if I’m making it worse,” Sirius said, at last. “Don’t wanna ruin your snow leopard retreat for you. Like, if I’m hitting your triggers –”
“Oh, no, you’re okay,” Remus practically begged. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so unfriendly. It’s just…”
“You haven’t been unfriendly.” Sirius sounded genuinely surprised. “I’ve been kind of unfriendly – just wanted to give you space.”
“Oh. Well, I, I mean…” Remus’s thoughts had been derailed so many times in the past few minutes that he had no idea how to pick up the pieces again. “I don’t think you’re unfriendly.”
“Thanks.” Sirius leant back in his seat, letting his head loll on the uncomfortably low back of the sofa. “No sign of any snow leopards, huh?”
“Not yet.” Remus’s eyes swung back to the screens as if pulled by a magnet. “They’ll be here soon. I’m sure of it.”
Day Six
“You’ll like it,” Sirius promised. “It’s clever.”
“Is it though?” Remus regarded the laptop screen with trepidation. “And shouldn’t at least one of us be concentrating on the mountain?”
“We’ll notice if anything moves out there. You can’t just sit on the floor looking at rocks all day – you’ll go crazy.” Sirius hit a few buttons. “It’s just telly, Remus. It’s not going to kill you.”
Remus had given in. The past few days had been a careful dance as they slowly got used to sharing a space. The cups of coffee had still flowed freely – sugared this time, always. The conversation had faltered and stagnated time and again but it always found its feet eventually. But six days in a bunker is a long time and Remus’s willpower was dying.
“It’s a murder programme?” he asked doubtfully.
“Mysteries of all kinds. Like Morse but a thousand times cooler. This police detective – Lily Anderson – she’s got all these cases to solve. But she’s also got her brother who’s, like, a genius or something, and he uses his smarts and his obscure knowledge to help her crack the case.”
“And he’s a physicist. How often does physics even come up in police work?”
“I mean, yeah, he’s officially a physicist but he knows all sorts of other stuff. Like there’s this amazing episode where he solves it because of this obscure, like, Sri Lankan poet or something?”
“Isn’t it kind of sexist that this Lily woman needs her brother to solve her cases for her?”
“Oh my god, Remus, you are so overthinking this. She’s utilising her resources. Besides, she solves loads without his help. There’s a great one in the second season where he actually gets it wrong cos he’s reading too much into things and she has to set him right. Best episode, by far. Anyway, you’re going to love it.”
Law of Physics was apparently Sirius’s great passion. He had told Remus so much about it that it was a miracle he was still going into this unsure of any of the plots. Sirius kept insisting that he would love it, because it was about a genius academic. Remus wasn’t sure whether there was a compliment hidden in there, or an insult.
“Hey.” Sirius tapped near him to get his attention. “Stop looking for snow leopards. This is going to change your life.”
Day Ten
“Alright, the horsies…move in an L shape, right?” Sirius frowned over the chessboard as though it were life and death.
“The knights,” Remus emphasised, “move in an L, yes.”
“And the sneaky priests go diagonally.”
“You can just call them bishops. I know you can remember the word ‘bishop’. You’re not as stupid as you pretend to be.”
Sirius looked up, eyes wide and hurt. “You think I’m stupid?”
“Oh no, I didn’t mean –!” Remus fumbled. “Of course you’re not stupid! It’s just that sometimes you –”
“Relax! I’m messing with you!”
He laughed. He had a pleasant laugh, loud and unabashed. Sometimes he snorted. It wasn’t the rich, sardonic laugh you would expect from that kind of face. It was boyish, all over the place. Remus liked to hear it.
Remus liked Sirius. That was what he was discovering, and it frightened him. They had nothing in common, it was true, but Sirius was so confident, so capable. He moved through life as though he didn’t understand a thing and, intoxicatingly, as though that didn’t matter in the slightest. Worst of all was the fact that he was continuing to shed clothing layers like a snake sheds skin. So far, he had still had the decency to keep some kind of shirt on but he had lost his sleeves and Remus was fairly sure those were boxers he was wearing, not shorts.
Sirius was attractive. Oh, that was dangerous.
“Okay, so…your tower is in the way of my pawn so I’ll send my horsie over there to take him out.”
He did so with every appearance of pride. Remus looked down at the board in disbelief.
“Um…okay…”
He claimed the knight and added it to the growing pile of Sirius’s pieces at his own side of the board.
“So cruel,” Sirius said sadly. “The poor horsie, killed before its time.”
“Please stop calling it a horsie. I’m begging you. Why did you do that? You could see I was going to take your knight.”
“Yes, but the pawn was in danger.”
“So? Sacrifice the pawn. You’ve sacrificed every piece other than your pawns so far.”
“I don’t see why the boys should have to die in a war they wanted no part in. Lads only joined up to see the world, get out of their hometown. No reason to murder them when you’ve got people who joined this war by choice.”
“You can’t treat chess as a simulation for actual warfare,” Remus pleaded, not for the first time. “You just can’t.”
“I’m not. Has anybody staged a coup this time? You said I wasn’t allowed to organise an uprising against the king and I listened. Now we’re just fighting a battle, like normal.”
“But you’re going to lose!”
“With honour.” Sirius winked, and Remus’s stomach did uncomfortable little flips. “And style.”
He reached across for his mug of coffee and Remus’s eyes tracked the movement of his arm. It was obscene, that arm. The way the muscles moved under the skin, the way the veins stood out…Remus hadn’t realised that happened in real life. Part of him had put it down as athletic advertising but no, Sirius really did look like that. He could have broken Remus’s neck with scarcely a thought. Oh, this was going to get bad very quickly.
“So what’s your next move, general?” Sirius drained his coffee mug and sat back. “Or are you ready to surrender?”
Day Twelve
The night cameras made the screens look eerie. The room seemed to be swimming gently. Remus took another gulp of whiskey. Who knew he liked whiskey? He hadn’t had alcohol since he was a teenager. He didn’t feel drunk but he knew, intellectually, that he must be.
Being drunk was supposed to feel out of control. Or perhaps he was supposed to feel happy, or energetic, or brave. He didn’t feel any of those things. He just felt as though the constant screaming in the back of his mind was finally quiet. Maybe this was how other people felt all the time.
“I went to boarding school.”
“What?” He turned his head to look at Sirius, who lounged across the sofa. “What do you mean?”
“I went to boarding school. In Scotland. I was sent away when I was eight years old.”
“God.” Remus poured himself another glass. “That’s too young.”
“Tell me about it. But it was still better than being at home.”
“You didn’t like being at home?”
“Family,” Sirius said vaguely. “Mother.”
There was a pause. Remus had no idea what he was supposed to say, but it wasn’t like normal. The worry wasn’t there. He just kept quiet and let the conversation move around him. He wasn’t fighting it.
“The family is rich,” Sirius spoke quietly and smoothly, in a tone of voice Remus had never heard him use before. “Very rich – old money rich. My father went to that boarding school. My grandfather went to that boarding school. So did his grandfather. One of my grandfathers way back was in the school’s founding class, after he got expelled from Eton. Oh yes, we’re old money.”
It was the accent, Remus realised. Sirius’s sharp accent, skipping and skittering from one syllable to the next, had lulled into something classic, something moneyed. The man wasn’t lying; he’d been raised on RP.
“My mother, though, she cared more about any of that than my father ever did. Quite ground him under her heel, she did. And me? I was never good enough. Neither of us were – Reggie and me. Boarding school was a relief. Easy to make a name for yourself there, be something, make choices, even if they’re bad ones. Couldn’t do that at home.”
Sirius sank down till he was practically lying, one arm trailing to brush against the floor.
“Reggie was the golden boy. He’s three years younger than me. I was the fuck up. Left as soon as I could – got out of there and haven’t looked back since. Reggie never escaped. Thought he would, once. Kid got anxious. Depressed. Thought we’d escape together, start again where she couldn’t get to us. But he got treatment and decided he’d stay. No idea how he’s doing now. Haven’t heard from him in a couple of years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ah, nah, what’s it matter? We all make our choices. Family, right? Fucking mess.”
“Mess,” Remus agreed. “My family…I don’t know. Maybe they’re idyllic.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, little cottage. Mother and father. Only son. Little local school. Family dinners. Sunday afternoon outings to the river or somewhere. Picture perfect.”
“Must have been nice.”
“Mmm.” Something dark and cold twisted in Remus’s stomach. “They loved the other boy more than me.”
“Who’s the other boy? Your brother?”
“No. Only son, remember? Only child. But they had this idea of….of what I was going to be. Never worked out like that. Always seemed like they were trying to hold the space open, in case he ever decided to come back. The boy they wanted me to be. Thought I was going to be. You know.”
There was silence for a moment. Remus hastily poured himself another glass.
“Anyway, it’s not important. Not like you.”
“’s important.” Sirius rolled completely off the sofa and sat up, rubbing at his head and ruffling his hair into static spikes. “No good, getting lost behind what other people want. But they’re proud of you, right?”
“I guess.”
“Must be. PHD.”
Remus smiled despite himself. “Yeah, they’re…supportive. I mean, first generation graduate, me. They pushed themselves to the edge to help me afford it. But they don’t…they’re really good at telling themselves stories, you know? ‘This is our son, and he’s got a degree, and now he’s going to get a job and meet somebody and start a family, and he’s going to be successful and we’ll be grandparents, and we’ll visit him and it’ll all be…’ Well, you know.”
Sirius didn’t say anything. Remus thought about the look on his mother’s face the last time she saw him, that strange hopeful look, like she was searching him for any sign of the son she knew must be hidden there somewhere.
“Parents, man,” Sirius said, at last.
“Parents.”
Remus drained his glass and leant back, watching the fluorescent lights above him spin gently like ballerinas on a music box.
Day Fifteen
“I do know how to cook,” Remus complained. “I have cooked before.”
“Spaghetti doesn’t even count as cooking.” Sirius passed him a knife. “Do you know how to dice an onion?”
“Of course I know how to dice an onion!”
“Then step to it.”
The bunker’s kitchen was almost too small for two people to be in at the same time but they were making it work. Sirius kept passing so close to Remus that their hips bumped together, or their arms brushed. It was incredibly distracting – not at all a good thing when wielding a knife. He bit down hard on his lip and tried to concentrate.
“I have cooked before,” he said, for the fourteenth time that day. “I can do all the basic things.”
“You just told me you don’t know how to make stir fry. What kind of person has never made stir fry?”
“I don’t even know if I’ve ever eaten stir fry.”
“You’re a menace to society. Are you done with the onion?”
“Yes.” Remus piled the diced pieces neatly together and let Sirius scoop them up and drop them, with an unpleasant hissing noise, into the pan. “What’s next, chef?”
Sirius grinned at him, so bright it was almost dazzling. “Peppers, o underling. Get dicing.”
*
Hours later, the plates stood empty on the floor. Remus sat on the sofa with his head in his hands, barely able to keep his eyes open. He hadn’t slept at all the previous night. It had just felt right, like this would be the moment the snow leopards made their appearance. They hadn’t, but that was no reason to disregard a hunch.
“You should get some rest,” Sirius remarked. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine.” Remus smothered a yawn. “You go to bed.”
“As somebody who got a full night’s sleep last night, it’s still early.”
“Mmm.” Remus blinked and struggled to get his eyes back open. “Lucky you.”
“Coffee. I’ll make a fresh pot.”
Remus heard Sirius leave the room but he couldn’t persuade his eyes to watch him go. The world seemed dull and hazy. When had he last slept a full night? Everything was soft. He kicked his legs up beside him on the sofa and settled more comfortably. After all, there was no harm in that, was there? Sirius would be back soon with coffee and he would wake up then.
Sirius made really good coffee. Remus had come to accept that. He was a good cook too – that much couldn’t be denied. Really, it was almost annoying how good he was at everything of any practical value. Somebody ought to tell the man to get some more flaws. And also to stop wearing that much make-up when there had been nobody around for two weeks but some anxious academic whose shirts were starting to go un-ironed.
“Oh, Ree…” Sirius’s voice was soft.
Remus’s eyes were closed. When had he closed them? He hadn’t closed them. But they didn’t appear to be seeing anything so they must be closed. He tried to raise his head but the muscles didn’t appear to be working. When he tried to say something, all that came out was a small mumble.
He felt something move over him, and then large hands were gently tucking a blanket around his shoulders. Remus wanted to be embarrassed as Sirius patted it gently into place but he couldn’t, just couldn’t. He couldn’t even think. Was he even awake? This didn’t seem like an awake kind of moment.
“There,” Sirius whispered, and gently ran his hand through Remus’s hair. “Sleep tight.”
Remus wanted to say something. He never wanted to move again. The world was so quiet just then. So quiet.
Day Seventeen
Remus shuddered and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Maybe it he wished himself somewhere else it would be alright.
“This isn’t supposed to be an ordeal,” Sirius said irritably. “I’m trying to help.”
“I know.” Remus took a deep breath. “Go ahead.”
“Seriously, you can, like, tell me to stop.”
“It’s fine.”
Sirius huffed and Remus felt the puff of warm breath on the back of his neck. Then Sirius’s hands were on his shoulders, not gentle enough to make him go weak at the knees with the caress of it but still the contact made him feel sick to the stomach – not nauseous, but the dull adrenalin flip-flopping at the end of a rollercoaster.
“God, you might as well be made of teak.” Sirius dug his fingers in and Remus hissed. “You’re a mess. I told you not to sit so close to the screen.”
“This has nothing to do with sitting close to the screen.”
“Yeah, it does. Your posture is hell. You sit like somebody’s dropped you there. It’s fucking up your back.”
Sirius’s fingers worked deftly, assuredly. Remus felt as though he were melting slowly, fading away. Sirius pressed hard on a space at the base of his neck and Remus was so light-headed he thought he might faint.
“Where did you learn to do this?” he asked, to cover his sudden inexplicable urge to burst into tears.
“Dated a masseuse.” Sirius seemed to be wringing out Remus’s shoulders like an old towel, and the muscles of his back turned to water. “Turned out to be a bad move – total dick when you got right down to it. Learned some useful stuff though.”
“Oh.” Remus bit down hard on his tongue to keep from moaning in relief as the crick in his neck that had been torturing him for days finally crunched back into place.
“That’s it.” Sirius’s hands roved down over his shoulder blades, unravelling knots Remus had never known existed. “Better.”
He was sitting perched on the back of the sofa but he dropped then, settling himself in place beside Remus so that he had the freedom to reach round and press carefully, one point at a time, at his lower back. Remus chewed on his tongue and closed his eyes in embarrassment as that did not stop a tiny sound of pleasure escaping him.
“You’re a disaster, you know that? The way you’re all tensed up, you’ll do yourself actual damage.”
Remus felt a tingling spreading through his hips, like blood flow resuming where it had long been cut off. Was this what the human body was supposed to feel like? Supple and languid, not a tight little bundle of nerves and stiff joints?
Sirius slid from the sofa onto the floor, kneeling at Remus’s feet. Without batting an eyelid, he ran his hands up Remus’s calf under the stiff, cheap fabric of his professional trousers. Remus let out an involuntary squeak of surprise, which Sirius took it upon himself to ignore. He dug his fingers in, squeezing the muscle, gently pummelling it into submission. Remus’s knee quivered like it might break apart, and relaxed. Sirius hummed in satisfaction, rubbing circles around his ankle. Remus could feel it all the way up in his head.
Sirius’s hands stilled. Remus opened his eyes and looked down quickly, ready for disaster. It was worse than he had expected. Sirius was staring, one eyebrow slightly raised, at Remus’s crotch. He followed his gaze. Oh no. Oh, please, no. He had a hard-on. This was the worst possible outcome. This was probably assault. Did this count as workplace harassment? Why couldn’t he have just kept his cool for a minute or two? This was pathetic. There was no need for this. And Sirius was looking at him like he was something from outer space and, oh god, he must hate him, he must despise him…
“Fuck,” Remus whispered.
He stood up, ready to rush from the room, to hide himself away forever and possibly slit his wrists in the bathroom so that he never had to face this again. At least, he tried to. Sirius’s hands were on his thighs, pressing him firmly back into his seat, pinning him there. Remus shrank back against the sofa as Sirius half-stood, leaning over him.
“Say that again,” he said hoarsely.
“Fuck,” Remus repeated, because at this point, why disobey?
Sirius kissed him. Remus squeaked in surprise as lips were pressed firmly against his. One hand caught his chin and held him steady, fingertips stroking gently against his cheekbone. The other tangled itself in his hair. Remus had never felt more caged and he didn’t mind. He never wanted it to stop. He kissed back with more enthusiasm than skill and Sirius matched him, crushing him, sliding a tongue into his gasp-open mouth. Remus’s head swam. He felt dizzy. He felt as though he were vanishing away, being consumed.
Sirius drew back, just far enough for them to breathe. Remus could only see his face in fragments, splintered. The air he was breathing was air from Sirius’s lungs. And all at once, he remembered why this was a bad idea. Why he shouldn’t be doing it. About workplace rules, and contracts, and good manners, and morals, and promises he had made himself about time and people and life in general. About the consequences if this got out of hand, even for a second, even for a heartbeat.
“No!”
It came out sounding more like a cry of panic than Remus had intended and Sirius sprang back from him instantly, three paces back quick as a dancer, hands pressed against his sides, gaze slightly lowered. The action seemed almost practiced, but there was no time to think about that now. No time to think about anything. Remus fled.
He ran to his little bunk room and flicked the bolt on the door. He dropped to the floor, wrapped his arms tight around himself, buried his head down till the pressure spotted his vision and he could bite hard against his wrist, hard enough to taste blood. His fingernails dug in. He stayed that way for hours, till the world stopped spinning and the self-loathing had settled to mere background radiation, a familiar chorus, easy to ignore.
Day Nineteen
Remus didn’t want to emerge from his bunk room. He wanted to stay there forever, let it become his coffin. Sirius had been to knock on his door several times but Remus hadn’t dared respond. Even if he had wanted to, he wasn’t sure he could have found the words. His soul seemed to have shrunk in on itself. He was buried deep within his own body.
But there were the snow leopards. Of course, there were little things like food and water too but more important than any of those were the snow leopards. Remus was here for the snow leopards. Supposing they arrived and he was too busy refusing to face himself? Impossible. Unthinkable. He had to be brave, for them.
Remus found the cleanest, least crumpled clothes in his collection and pulled them on. He combed his hair. His fists clenched and unclenched spasmodically every time his hands had no task to complete but that was normal. That was a side effect of spending a couple of days away from his medication – safely stored in the kitchen. It was amazing how quickly the loss of it took effect.
Bold resolves aside, he drew back the latch very slowly, trying to stay as quiet as possible. He opened the door with barely a creak. That was when it all went wrong, for the moment he stepped outside, his foot came down on something sharp with an appalling clatter and he fell headfirst into the corridor with a shriek of terror.
He landed on his chin and elbows with a resounding crack. His shins hit something solid that wasn’t the floor. His vision starred. Footsteps came running.
“Oh my god! Are you okay?”
Remus wanted to die. Maybe he was already dead. That would be nice. That would save him some trouble.
“Are you unconscious?” Sirius’s voice was high and quick with fear. “If you’re knocked unconscious, I have to check you have a pulse. Do you have a pulse?”
He was going to have to face this. Remus drew his knees up to his stomach and rolled slowly over, folding into a kneeling position like a tangled puppet unravelling. He blinked, only half-seeing, at Sirius, who stood over him, wringing his hands like a widow at the dockside.
He was shirtless. His chest, which Remus had imagined in the darkness of the night when nobody could possibly know, was every bit as beautiful as he had hoped. He tore his eyes away just as quickly, forced himself to focus on the floor. Tears started, and that was alright. He deserved that.
“I’m alright,” he managed but it sounded like a lie even to himself.
“You don’t look alright.” Sirius twisted his fingers around one another worriedly. “You, um, I think you tripped over the bowl.”
So that was what it was. Remus’s watery vision resolved to reveal the secret obstacle that had been his undoing. A bowl of pasta had tipped over the corridor, spilling its cold, semi-congealed contents everywhere. A mug of coffee had split in two. The little cardboard box containing Remus’s medication had been squashed flat.
“It was supposed to be helpful,” Sirius said desperately. “Not an ambush.”
Remus burst into tears. If he had been crying before, it was nothing on this. The sobs wracked him. They tore out of his throat like they wanted to carry his lungs behind them. His shoulders shook. Ugly noises broke out of his mouth. His nose started to run. He huddled on the floor and cried like he hadn’t cried in years.
“Oh! Um…” Sirius crouched down beside him. “Hey. Um. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“You made me pasta!” Remus wailed, between gasps for breath. “You made me pasta!”
“I thought you liked pasta!” Sirius was frantically trying to clear up the mess. “Do you not like pasta? You’ve been eating pasta these past three weeks!”
“I love pasta!”
Remus couldn’t say anything else. He could only cry, because he was so stupid and so shallow and had no control over anything, and here he was sobbing his heart out in front of this man, whom he had taken advantage of, and who was so beautiful, and who had made him pasta…
“Would you like a tissue? Oh, shit, I don’t have any tissues. Um…”
Remus was calming down simply because he had no energy to do anything else. His body was putting on the brakes for him, demanding at the very least a sustaining snack before it was asked to put in that much work again.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s all going to be okay.” Sirius’s hand waved vaguely in the air, like he wanted to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder but didn’t quite dare touch him. “Is it because of the pasta? I can make more pasta. That pasta was too cold to eat anyway. It wouldn’t have been nice.”
Remus was a big bundle of snot and tears, a nothingness collapsed on the floor, and here was Sirius, so put-together, so tall, so beautiful, offering to cook him dinner. It was too much. It was unfair. If he had had enough water in his body left for more tears, he would have cried again. Instead, he had to settle for a dry sob that shook his whole body and a desperate shake of his head.
“Tissue,” Sirius mumbled. “Tissues are good.”
He stood up and vanished. Remus wrapped his arms around himself and tried to think sensible thoughts. He had none left to think. Sirius was back in a moment, carrying a glass of water and a roll of toilet paper. He held both of them out at arms’ length, uncertain.
“It’s basically tissues,” was all he said.
Remus accepted, because what else could he do? He drank water, blew his nose, drank some more water, started crying again, wiped his eyes, finished the water… It probably took twenty minutes for him to be calm enough to act like a normal human being, and the spaces that had previously been too overwhelmed to process anything else happily opened their doors to shame.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Sirius was sitting down by this point, leaning against the wall. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“No!” Remus sounded almost angry. “You shouldn’t!”
Sirius took a deep breath. “Look, I…I read all your signals and I ignored them. Cos I wanted what I wanted. That’s…that’s a really shitty thing to do.”
“What?” Remus shook his head. He felt as though he had water in his ears. “No, no. I shouldn’t have done this to you.”
“Done what?”
“This!” Remus gestured helplessly around. “Taken advantage of you, then ignored you, then ruined your food, and…”
“Taken advantage of me? You think you took advantage of me?”
“I am your workplace superior!”
Sirius burst out laughing. It was such a comforting sound, with helpless little piggy snorts every time he tried to catch his breath, that the last of the chaos filling Remus’s mind faded away. He was still confused, but it was the confusion of a normal man not the cacophony of anxiety screaming out.
“Oh my god, Ree!” Sirius shook his head, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you know, I hadn’t even thought of that? You’re right, though – how wicked of you. Practically depraved!”
“I know!” Remus shuddered. “I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t thinking but that’s no excuse for –”
“Okay, bad time for teasing, clearly.” Sirius tipped his head sideways, like a puppy trying to decide of a leaf skittering across the ground was friend or foe. “Let’s break this down. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Remus opened his mouth to protest but Sirius cut him off, smile slipping away at once.
“No, I’m not kidding – you’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve been flirting with you for weeks. If you’re taking advantage of me, then you’re taking advantage of the very obvious lures I’ve been casting out.”
“You’ve been luring me?”
“It sounds weird if you twist the phrase up like that. But yeah, god, did you not notice? I thought I couldn’t be more obvious.”
“I don’t interact with many people. I thought that was just how humans are. I mean, obviously people in academia are human but –”
Sirius laughed again. “Look at it this way, Remus. How many people do you know who walk around half-dressed in front of their colleagues all day?”
Remus searched his memory. “Two.”
“Two?”
“You. And Dr Ericson at the university. He doesn’t anymore because a student complained, which is really fair enough, it was very unprofessional, but he still goes to see other members of staff in nothing but a housecoat.”
“Okay, so, Dr Ericson sounds like a dubious character all round but you seriously weren’t taking that as a hint? Or all the comments I made? The times I held your hand?”
“You mean when you were teaching me how to use a potato masher?”
“When else?”
“I thought you were just teaching me how to use a potato masher.”
“Okay. Sure.” Sirius passed a hand over his eyes. “I just…look, you walked in here in your little blazer and tie – we’re half-way up a mountain, miles from bloody anywhere, and you’ve got your tie all knotted precisely. And I thought, ‘I’m either going to fall for him or murder him’. And then it was all awkward and I thought maybe it would be murder but when you started talking about that damn road bike of yours and your face lit up like the fucking sun…I don’t know, man. Turned out to be the other option.”
Remus didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure what was going on. He ought to be feeling something now. There ought to be a warmth spreading through him, or joy unfurling her wings in his chest, or something, anything at all. Instead there was nothing. The words seemed to glance off him, like raindrops on glass. They didn’t quite reach him.
There was something he ought to say, perhaps. An appropriate response to the situation. Instead, he said: “There’s nothing strange about wearing a tie to work.”
“What’s the point? Who’s going to see?”
“You were going to see. My colleague. It’s professional dress for a work environment. If it comes to that, why do you wear make-up all the time?”
“Obviously because I look devastatingly handsome in it and I’ve been trying to attract your attention.”
“It worked.”
That was out before he could stop it and Sirius’s grin could have powered three cities.
“Oh, I know it did. You’re not half as subtle as you think you are when you’re watching me.” The smile vanished again. “But I overstepped a line, and I know that, and I’m sorry. I could see you were uncomfortable. I should have backed off right away. I shouldn’t have waited for you to speak.”
“No.” The word was agony in Remus’s mouth. “I didn’t want you to back off.”
“But you didn’t want me to be touching you.”
“I…I don’t…”
There ought to be a simple answer. It ought to be straight-forward – yes I like you, no I don’t. But there was so much else going on in Remus’s world, so much tangled up and tied together, so much to be unravelled before he could even begin to understand. That he wanted Sirius to kiss his breath away was just as true as the fact that he wanted never to be touched, ever again, in all his life.
“It’s not as easy as that.”
What a pathetic answer that was, but Sirius nodded like he understood.
“I need…I don’t…” Remus took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry I’ve been hiding in my room for two days.”
“It’s okay. I get it. But…yeah, um, if you plan on doing that again, maybe you could at least take your medication with you? There were moments when I was kind of scared you were in there killing yourself.”
“Oh no,” Remus promised earnestly. “I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
He realised what that sounded like only after he had said it and something seemed to move, deep down in Sirius’s eyes.
“Let’s make this as simple as we can,” he said quietly. “I hope I’ve made it pretty clear what I want by now. But you’re struggling. So I’m going to keep my distance and, when you’re ready, you’re going to tell me what you decide. If you want the things I do, then that’s…good. But if you don’t, then I’ll never even mention it again. Like it never happened. One word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”
“Pride and Prejudice,” Remus blurted out.
“Alright, fine, should have known you’d recognise it,” Sirius grumbled. “Let me steal words from people who are better at this than I am. Cos I’m not good at it – thinking about other people, I mean. Being a good person. But I want to be and…yeah. That’s how things are, I think. Does that work for you?”
It put an unbearable amount of pressure on him to find a solution to the mess inside but Remus nodded. He would figure it out. There wasn’t any alternative.
“Right then.” Sirius stood up. “I’ll make you some more pasta.”
“I…I think I’ll take a shower.” Remus couldn’t look him in the eyes.
“You haven’t eaten in days. You should have some dinner.”
“I will. Afterwards.”
“Okay.” Sirius’s smile was strange to see. “Whatever you need.”
*
Post-shower, it dawned on Remus that none of his shirts were ironed. This was bad. If he was going to face this – and he was, he had to, before it all got confused again – then he wanted to do it as professionally as possible. He put on a tie anyway, though. Tightening the knot at his throat helped him. It was calming, like buckling on armour.
Sirius was sitting on the sofa, playing some sort of game on his phone. The blooping noises were so loud in the stillness that Remus hardly dared speak above them. But by the time he had stood in the doorway for a second, Sirius looked up and saw him. Remus’s heart hammered, the voices in the back of his head that guided his movements screamed and surrendered, his breathing quickened. His fists clenched and unclenched.
“Hi,” Sirius said, so lightly that it was almost as though everything that had happened had been a dream.
“Hi.” Remus took a deep breath and forced himself onwards. “I…I’ve been thinking about what you said. And it’s not straightforward. I’ve got some…some issues. Some problems. I think that’s been made blindingly obvious at this point.”
“It’s hard to miss,” Sirius agreed, in a tone so neutral it could have turned a blind eye to any atrocities committed by a neighbouring country.
“And the circumstances make it complicated. I mean, this is a work environment. We’re supposed to be professional. Any sort of…of involvement is extremely unprofessional.”
“That’s true.”
The words came out in a rush, making a dash for it before his defences could rise again. “But I like you so much.”
Sirius grinned, slowly, lazily. He reached out a hand.
“C’m’ere.”
Remus sagged. He all but fell across the room. He caught Sirius’s hand and let himself be tugged, unresisting, into his lap. Sirius wrapped his arms around him, bundled him up, crushing him against his chest. Remus buried his head in his neck and shivered, tried to keep the terror at bay. It was surprisingly easy.
“So we’re doing this?” Sirius whispered into his hair.
“Please,” was all the reply Remus could think of.
The kiss didn’t drown him this time. It was sweet and soft as blossom. Sirius cradled his face with calloused palms and eased him into it. Remus kept a grip on himself, held himself back from falling madly into the first physical contact he had known in such a long time. The tentativeness, the timidity, of it was almost painful. But it was good. So good.
How long they spent kissing, wordless, Remus never knew. Their hands scarcely moved. Sirius’s grip on him stayed tight but always above the waist, firm, never straying into dangerous territory. Remus dared once to run his hand, as he had longed to do since Day One, through Sirius’s long curls, and was rewarded by a fluttering of his eyelids, a soft noise of pleasure, but that was as far as either of them went.
It was almost juvenile. Kids in school kissed with more passion than this. First-time lovers tumbled into one another’s arms with more confidence. There was something chaste about it, restrained, a play of courtly love. But it was all Remus felt capable of and he was not afraid. The anxiety muttered its dire warnings but Sirius kissed them away, smiled them into submission, and the world was so still. Time moved so slowly. It felt like starting again.
“You really should eat something,” Sirius said, after an hour or several years had passed.
“I’m not hungry.”
He was starving, but he was so comfortable where he was.
“Yes, you are – your stomach’s rumbling. I can hear it.” Sirius brushed a loose strand of hair from Remus’s face and he nearly died. “Let me make you pasta. Please. Before you waste away.”
Remus nodded reluctantly. “Okay. Pasta.”
He scrambled from Sirius’s lap and stood awkwardly, adjusting his crumpled shirt, tugging at his cuffs. Sirius rose languidly and held out a hand to him.
“Come on then. You can help chop things. I’m not your butler.”
The relief was like oxygen. It was normal. Things were going to be normal. Remus might not know the script of correct behaviour here but Sirius did. He could guess at his lines. They were going to be okay.
He followed Sirius into the kitchen like the wolf must once have followed man home from the wilderness.