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When Sirius was fifteen he decided he wanted long hair. It came out of nowhere, and Peter, like the idiot he was, said something along the lines of but won't you look like a girl?
“No, Pete,” Sirius replied and rolled his eyes. He was always rolling his eyes dramatically at fifteen, like a teenage girl in a Muggle film. “I'll look like Freddie Mercury,” he said and James laughed. Remus can remember the sound of his laughter so clearly even after all this time.
And if Sirius noticed Peter lean across the table and say to Remus, “Freddie Mercury sort of looks like a girl,” then he didn't say anything. Remus thinks he kicked Peter in the shins, though he can't remember. These days, he finds it difficult to differentiate between the things he did or didn't do and, more regrettably, the things he should have done in the past.
These days, Remus also finds himself clenching his jaw and counting backwards from ten when he thinks about Peter Pettigrew (even eleven year old Peter, the one with the gap between his front teeth, before his freckles faded and his blonde hair turned brown). He wonders, from time to time, if he should have noticed something was off about Peter sooner, but then reminds himself that he can’t change the past so it doesn’t really matter anymore.
-
The big black dog had shown up sometime in the middle of the day on Monday. Remus greeted it at the door and wondered if it remembered its name. Padfoot. The dog slid through the crack between the door and the frame, but only after Remus said it was okay to come inside. It neither looked up at Remus nor over its hairy shoulders. Remus shut the door and locked it, something he usually forgot to do, and when he turned around Sirius Black was standing in the middle of his living room, teeth chattering even though it was summertime.
He was also staring. Sirius’ eyes were wide and he looked frightened. Suddenly, he stumbled forward and fell into Remus, holding him tightly. Remus couldn't tell if this was because Sirius missed him, or simply because he could barely stand on two legs without support. He wanted it to be because Sirius missed him that badly, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter. Anyway he didn't think about it too long, promptly pushing the thought out of his brain. Sirius smelt sour like sweat, but also like fresh rain on pavement. Remus placed one hand on the back of Sirius’ head, barely touching him at first like he was waiting for Sirius to do something, and then softly clutching his dark matted hair. He snaked his other arm over Sirius’ shoulder and pulled him closer. Sirius did not protest.
Remus remembered late nights in London when Sirius would come to bed, if he even came home and Remus would reach over, trying to pull Sirius closer. More often than not, Sirius rejected it.
At first, he said it was too hot to sleep that close, which was fair when it was warm, but it still hurt Remus’ feelings more than it probably should have. Sometimes Sirius would turn over, kiss the scar on Remus’ nose and say something like “Not tonight, Rem,” before turning back.
Other nights, towards the end, he got out of bed altogether and slept as Padfoot on the floor. Remus hated Sirius on those nights. Actually, he hated Sirius most of the time by then. He'd whisper “Fuck you,” into the darkness like a mantra, hoping Sirius would hear and maybe say something back. He never did, and despite all of this Remus still tried to hold him at night, all the way until the very last night.
Remus was surprised when Sirius had begun to cry. He had seen Sirius cry more than any of their friends. When they were growing up, Sirius had a tendency to cry when he was mad more than any other reason. This was particularly common the summer after Sirius left home, bursts of fury that would usually result in Sirius saying something undeservedly nasty that he didn’t mean, then disappearing when the tears began. On one occasion in fifth year, not long after the thing they promised to never speak about, Remus and Sirius got into their first and only physical fight. Remus started it, but James finished it after Sirius knocked Remus off his feet and started kicking him in the stomach. He cried while he did it, and his cruelty shifted from calling Remus mean and childish things to screaming about how much he hated his mother and father and wishing he was dead.
Sirius usually only cried when he was mad, but Remus didn't think he was angry right now and if he was mad then the battle was already won because Remus had no fight left.
"I’m sorry, Remus. I’m so, so sorry," Sirius finally choked the words out. "I'm sorry for everything."
Remus let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding onto.
"What's done is done," he said, dropping his arms. He suddenly felt claustrophobic, as if he needed space. He took a step back, it was more like an inch, and glanced down. Sirius was barefoot. His feet were almost as black as the dog’s. Remus looked back up. "I forgive you," he told Sirius, and Sirius tried to smile.
It was then that Remus realized Sirius was missing a tooth.
This time last year, Remus would have lunged at Sirius and wrapped both his hands around his throat. He would have squeezed tighter and tighter until Sirius' face turned indigo and he passed away painfully on the floor of Remus' living room. That's what you get for killing my friends. That's what Remus would have said as Sirius took his last breath, just before his bloodshot eyes would roll into the back of his head.
“I forgive you, Sirius,” Remus said again.
That was two days ago. Remus looks at Sirius now, sitting on a kitchen chair, the only one that doesn't wobble, in front of the bathroom sink. The sun is almost setting. Remus wants to ask where they went wrong, but he doesn't. He thinks he never will, at least not for a very long time. If they even make it that far.
Rather than be brave and ask where they went wrong he holds a strand of Sirius’ hair in one hand and scissors in the other. They're the kind meant for food, although Remus is almost certain he’s never used them for their intended purpose. Anyway, it’s all he has and Sirius doesn't seem to care too much about most things besides revenge. Revenge and Harry.
Sirius wanted to look so much like Freddie Mercury when they were younger, specifically Freddie Mercury before 1980, and it makes Remus feel sick because Sirius used to be gorgeous. Now he looks fucking awful. His skin looks sort of gray but somehow green at the same time, but he’s also thin. He's fucking emaciated and it scares Remus.
On Sirius’ first night, Remus accidentally walked in on him naked, gripping the edges of the sink and glaring at the man in the mirror. Remus could see all twenty four ribs. His hips looked deadly, like if he were a strange Remus bumped into on the tube he'd cut him. Sirius had always been slender, though not as much as Remus who was so lanky before he turned seventeen that it looked like he might blow away if the breeze picked up enough, but Sirius was also deceptively strong. It was the reason why it was so easy for him to knock Remus down that day in fifth year. For the first time since he was eleven, Remus felt like he was stronger than Sirius. It took his breath away. He dropped the pile of clothes he'd brought for Sirius to change into after his shower and apologized before scurrying into the kitchen where he threw up in the sink like a coward.
Sirius’ body is a disaster, but his hair, Remus thinks, might be the saddest part. It's longer than ever, a frizzy, curly mess and when he showed up on Remus’ doorstep there were leaves in his hair and bugs… goddamn bugs! Little metallic motherfuckers like the ones Remus used to dig up in the garden with his mum when he was a kid.
“Moony… are you alright?”
Remus drops the piece of hair and his eyes snap up to meet Sirius’ reflection. He hadn’t realized he froze. Looking for something to do that isn’t stare into the abyss that is Sirius Black, Remus swallows so hard he starts to cough and his eyes almost water. “Yeah,” he tries to say between the coughs, “I’m fine.”
Sirius doesn't respond. He closes his eyes instead and Remus can't stop himself from watching him breathe.
You're alive, he finds himself thinking. You're alive, you're alive, you're alive. And I have never been more grateful.
When Sirius opens his eyes they look wet. Remus bites his bottom lip and tastes blood.
The fact of the matter is that Freddie Mercury is dead. So are James and Lily, and Sirius isn't quite the same as he was, probably never will be. He said so last night. During dinner he told Remus somewhere between talking about all the ways he was going to kill Peter and Remus, please tell me about Harry. Is he just like James? Remus can't decide how to feel about it. He doesn’t know what the right feeling would be. Nobody tells you how you should feel when you get back the person you loved more than anything and they're not themself at all. After dinner Remus wondered, if she were still alive, what his mother would tell him. Then he made a mental note that he should try to pray again sometime.
It's all Peter’s fault, stupid fucking rat.
The look on Sirius’ face, the one Remus knows too well, and the silence is killing him. Quiet leads to too much thinking, and Remus has dealt with far too much quiet in between 1981 and last autumn.
“I can't promise it'll look good,” he says after a minute, desperate to say anything. Remus never cuts his own hair with scissors. Why would he when there's spells for it? It's one of the rare things he doesn't mind not doing The Muggle Way, but Sirius gets tense and strange when Remus has his wand out. He almost didn't even let Remus use healing spells on his blistered hands and feet the other night.
“It's not like I have anybody to impress,” Sirius spits and, even though it comes out pissy, Remus thinks it's the most like his old self he's seemed since the night in the Shrieking Shack. Sirius looks down and starts to pick at the skin around his finger nails. He used to scold and swat at Remus for the same thing.
Don't you remember? Remus thinks. I used to pick at my fingers until I bled and you hated it. You have to remember, Sirius.
“I know, I know. I just… oh, actually I don't even really know. I just… I thought you might care.”
Sirius shrugs. “Yeah, well… I don't.”
“Okay.”
There's a moment of silence. “I want it all gone,” Sirius says.
“What? Are you sure?” Remus asks and Sirius nods. Remus doesn't move at first. He can't remember the last time he saw Sirius with short hair. It would be like if he looked in the mirror and there were no scars. But it's what Sirius wants and he hasn;t exactly gotten his way since '81 so Remus picks up the same strand of hair and just as the scissors are about to close Sirius jerks his head away.
“Wait,” he exclaims, and then twists around to look at Remus. He opens his mouth, then stops himself. His cheeks turn pink.
“What?” Remus asks.
“Do you think I'll,” Sirius stops himself. Remus watches him think about his next words. Since when does Sirius Black think before he opens his bloody mouth? “Will I still be handsome?”
And Remus doesn't say anything.
Sirius is practically a ghost. He looks like he should be dead and yet he isn't. He’s had better days, much better days, but there’s this part of Remus that isn’t as far below the surface as he wants to pretend it is that thinks Sirius is still the most beautiful person that has ever lived. Even if he isn't exactly the way he once was. Even if his hair is a disaster and he's too thin and his teeth are fucked (there's charms for those things anyway, Remus reminds himself). Even if sometimes he looks at Remus like he's trying to put together a puzzle.
Sirius looks like he should be dead, but he's not and that is a miraculous thing. Sirius is sitting in Remus’ bathroom in Remus’ clothes, looking up at him with those same blue eyes and Remus wants to kiss him, badly, like they're eighteen years old and just got their first flat and suddenly they can do whatever they want. No eavesdropping roommates, no worrying about being quiet so they didn’t wake up Mr. and Mrs. Lupin like that one winter. No more secrets.
Remus wants to kiss Sirius more than he wants to breathe.
There's probably something really wrong with Remus.
“Yeah,” he eventually says, remembering that Sirius asked him a question. "I mean… you need some meat on your bones, and some sunshine wouldn't kill you. But... yeah." Why the bloody hell are Remus’ palms this sweaty?
Sirius sighs. “No, no. That’s not… Moony, will I be handsome to you ?” Sirius clarifies and it’s the first time he’s called Remus that nickname but also… oh, that's what this is about. Of course that's what this is about.
Honestly, Remus never thought that would be a thing again. Him and Sirius. Still, he can't help but get the same feeling in his stomach as Sirius looks at him right now, really looks at him like he knows exactly where he is (Remus’ cottage in Wales, not the one he grew up in, rather the one that was his dad’s and now his) and like he suddenly remembers everything about Remus (his favorite Bowie song, the way Remus used to trace his collarbone when he was studying and the sound he'd make when Sirius kissed a specific spot behind his ear). He looks at Remus like he did when they were teenagers and nobody knew about them, not Lily, not even James. The secret looks. It used to be so embarrassing, the fact that Sirius could smile at Remus from across the room during Transfiguration and in an instant Remus would lose track of time and space.
We used to love each other, a voice in Remus’ head that sounds surprisingly like Sirius reminds him. Don't you remember? You have to remember, Moony.
They never said it, at least not out loud. Remus wishes they did. All that time together and they always danced around those words.
Why did they never say they loved each other?
Remus remembers the night it began. Him and Sirius. The night they went from just friends to more than just friends. He remembers slipping one night, after a party in October, or maybe it was November. Yeah, it was Sirius’ fifteenth birthday. Actually it was one in the morning after Sirius’ fifteenth birthday. Remus was way too drunk to think properly, leaning forward and kissing Sirius on the lips. Then he let his guard down when Sirius grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him back in. He remembers feeling Sirius smile against him, their teeth touching. It was something he’d never felt before.
“You fucker,” Sirius said into his mouth. “You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that.”
He remembers the things they did in the dark while they were still at school, when James and Peter were asleep, hidden behind the curtains in Sirius’ bed. The shower when they lived together; the night Sirius turned twenty and Remus bent him over the dining table. Alleyways and filthy restrooms in pubs and delirious kisses on the dance floor of a club. That one time on the bike, Remus' hand down the front of Sirius' pants, pressing his groin into the small of his back and whispering in Sirius' ear asking him to pull over.
He remembers James and Lily's wedding and how Sirius asked him to dance and the way he felt when Sirius said into his shoulder I really like you, Moony. You're my best friend. He remembers the look on Lily's face, glimmering from alcohol and her sideways smile and the way James stood beside her giving them a thumbs up before taking off his glasses when he started crying (again) because they knew . They knew Remus and Sirius loved each other and the world, to Remus’ surprise, didn’t end.
They were the last two slow dancers, that had to mean something.
But that was before they hated each other. How did we get here? Remus used to think when he'd lay on his side staring at Sirius' bareback on the nights Sirius pushed him away. Sirius couldn't (or maybe he refused to) meet Remus’ eyes during Order meetings, but he would still play with Remus' feet under the table, or interlock their pinkies the day they learned Marlene McKinnon was dead. Remus would return home from missions and Sirius wouldn’t speak to him except to call him a cunt or an idiot or both, but still had the audacity to stand across the room and watch Remus pack and beg him to come home alive.
Remus blinks, pushing the memories away because none of that matters anymore.
You're alive. You're alive, you're alive, you're alive. You're alive and so am I.
Then without thinking, Remus presses a soft kiss to Sirius’ forehead, like he used to do when they were young and in love; before the war felt real and Remus wasn't always so far away. Before if you love me you'll tell me where you go . Before not tonight, Rem.
It doesn't have to mean anything in the morning Remus tells himself, but it will because everything will always mean something when it comes to them. And Remus doesn’t mind. It used to be too much to handle but not anymore.
“Of course,” Remus says, “You’ll always be handsome to me.”
Sirius smiles. “Alright,” he says. And that is that.
-
When everything is said and done, and most of Sirius’ hair is scattered on the bathroom tile, Remus thinks he didn’t do half bad. All the tangled shit in his hair is gone, the beard too. Sirius said it made him look old and Remus had to remind them that they are in fact old now, which made Sirius roll his eyes and genuinely laugh for the first time since he was twenty one.
“It's so soft,” he says, running his hands through black hair, tucking it behind his ear and smiling (Remus knew he didn't mean it when he said he wanted it all gone). “I had almost forgotten what it–” Sirius starts to say. He turns around in the chair and looks up at Remus. “Thank you, Moony. Thank you so much.”
Remus smiles. “You look so grown up,” he says and he immediately regrets it because they're just words but everything always means something when it comes to him and Sirius so even when Sirius says nothing it’s more like yeah sure, that's great and all, Moony, but James never got to properly grow up, so maybe you should consider that, you selfish elderly prick according to the look on his face.
Sirius turns to face his reflection again. “I think it's the mustache,” he says after several seconds. "Makes me look distinguished, don't you think?”
Remus smiles again, shakes his head and then, before he realizes what his body is doing, leans down. He’s got his arms draped across Sirius’ chest and they're cheek to cheek.
You're alive, you're alive, you're alive. And so am I.
"Personally,” he says, turning to whisper into Sirius’ ear, “I always kinda preferred Freddie Mercury with short hair.”