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There’s a lamp, now. Its light is quite dim, and useless for those who want to receive help from it, but it’s a light, a shiny ball of stolen orange rays, and Sirius has not seen something like that in a long while.
Besides that, a man. Not a boy anymore, not how he was the last time. Remus Lupin is a shell of someone who’s failed to be a living being more times that he’d like to remember, and what was hidden deep down, in between his ribcage and heart and soul, is now apparent in his wrinkles, knotted eyebrows, gray hair: he is not young anymore and had never been.
Sirius is quite afraid of him, now. The way he looks at him like a sepia ringlet trying to scrape the back of Sirius’ throat every time he dares come near him, in the hollowness of a past that can’t even be fixed by a pair of half souls like them, never mind by itself.
So: beside the lamp, a man. And next to a man, a record player. Remus is listening to it, his drugged-sleep eyes on their way to fall asleep completely, from how Sirius remembers Remus being back then when he listened to music. Does he still do it to help himself sleep better? Has anything changed, has things worsened?
They’ve been living together for three days. They’ve not profaned a word to each other for more than ten years.
The record plays a gentle song, like the artificial whine of an animal about to be put down. He steps closer, still behind Remus.
You beat it in me that part of you
But I’m gonna split us back in two
“Who’s this singer?”
Remus quietly jumps, his head swaying away from the book he’s reading, but not turning around. Justified response; he has not heard Sirius’ voice in thirteen years.
Tired of living on a cloud
If you’re gonna say shit now you’ll do it out loud
“Elliott Smith.”
It’s 2.45 in the morning
And I’ve put myself a warning
“Isn’t it so peculiar,” he’s not standing anymore, his limbs slowly giving in to the softness of the couch— comfort that Sirius wouldn’t feel if he were able to remember the last time he slept on a bed. “how you went from one depressed kind of music to another?”
With waking up to an unknown place
With a recollection—
Remus turns off the music.
“What do you want, Sirius?”
“To talk?”
“We haven’t done that in days. In years. Did we ever, really.”
He pretends it doesn’t sting. “Better to start at some point.”
“Something about your lack of awareness. Your confidence, sureness, that I want to talk to you too.”
“Your low consideration of me never failed to amaze me.”
Remus suddenly glances up at him, a slacked expression followed by a sly furrow of his brows. Sirius thinks. He thinks he thinks he thinks and then looks at his feet.
“Can you blame me?”
“Never pretended to. I fucked up more times that I’d like to admit.”
“And—“ Remus sighs. “And yet.”
“Yeah. Do you have like— coffee. Or cigarettes. Do you still smoke?”
///
The kitchen is emptier than how it used to be. More plain, too. Sirius asks about it to Remus, to which he replies with a frown, to which Sirius wants to reply with, Of course I don’t remember, you git, don’t you think I hate this too?
Instead, he accepts the cigarette Remus offers him, and tries to light it with a snap of his fingers, failing miserably.
“Why are you here?”
“Dumbledore—“
“I know,” Remus passes him the lighter. They both put a good effort in not touching. “But why are you here.”
“Because— because I couldn’t stomach it.”
“What.”
“You. Me. Us strangers. Not after. After—“
“After believing I was the traitor and getting yourself locked in a prison?”
Sirius lets it sink in. He lets Remus’ anger flutter around the room, making a mess out of the bland furniture, imitating those edge shaped feelings as if he was Neoclassicism; Sirius has ever only seen an imitation of feelings just like the copy of a Greek work so similar to the original that people easily mistake it for one.
He lets it sink in and lets himself sink with it and when he comes back to the surface the kitchen has lost a bit of color.
“You’re mad at me, still.”
“Of course I’m still mad. It’d be daft not to,” he leans on the counter. “You should be, too, about everything that happened.”
“That’s what I used to tell you, right? Back in—“
“Yeah. I mean. You were always a fit of anger. Fucking fire waiting to be ignited. Or— something.”
“Something.”
“Always taking things too far. Never letting anyone come in between your last minute idea and yourself.”
“What does that even mean.”
“That you were— something. To others. To me. And now you’re—“
“I know. I don’t mean to.”
He’s a half attempt of a man he used to be, his own internal fire died down, extinguished by cold dry waterfalls of somewhere unknown. The play is over, everyone please go home
“You left. At some point.”
“Not on purpose.”
“No.” he stirs up the coffee on the stove. And Sirius’ soul, too. And them, both together and apart and with all things gone unsaid and spoken aloud. “You were there for Lily’s birthday, that I remember well. You were also there when Marlene died, and for Dorcas’ funeral. When my mother got sick, that’s when you disappeared. Gone. I wondered where you were for months.”
“I always lived with you, Remus.”
“ No . You were there like a ghost who crawled into other’s walls. I felt your presence but not you. I didn’t know why.”
“Then you knew.”
“And I wish I didn’t. I wish— you didn’t.”
Sirius moves a strand of hair from his face. They look at each other like one wants to leave and the other to stay and neither of them knows which is who.
“Didn’t do anything.
Anything
.”
“I wish so, too.”
“You left me rotting in my misery and you let yourself be swallowed by your huge stupid ego and lack of sanity. All because you didn’t trust me.”
There’s silence, then. It’s astonishing how it managed to disappear as much as it did, today, like it decided to take a little trip somewhere else and abandon Remus’ attempt to ignore Sirius for as long as he can. The other man can’t do much but nod, at the silence break.
“Can you even blame me? Always on those fucking missions, never telling me where you’ve been, with who. One person’s freedom ends with another's.”
“Some’s freedom of speech should be cut off from planet earth,” Remus spits out, standing up from the wooden chair. “Yours, too.”
“That’s a bit unethical, don’t you think.”
“Were– are you not sorry? Not a little bit? Don’t you have in your mind somewhere a tiny bit of empathy that makes you feel guilty about everything?”
“Do–”
“Because I do,” Remus cuts him off, looking right at him. Sirius feels alive once again. “I do feel sorry, for thinking you killed them, and Peter. Ever since I know the truth the guilt’s been eating me alive. That’s why I wish I didn’t know anything.”
“So you could keep hating me?”
Remus shrugs. “You are easier to hate than to miss.”
“And you are easier to miss than to love. I get it.”
“But you did both things. One more than the other, if I can assume.”
He only knew love from his mother’s ragged manners, the only way out a crucified spell which was both his condemnation and a purified goodbye, always grateful yet greedy for something else, for more. He only knew love like a blood-smeared tattoo on his cheek and the plea that someone will stay; mom, look at me, mom, stop yelling and look at me, let me in, let me be loved, let yourself be gentle. And later; mother, let me go, leave me alone, rotten and transfigured and dead, lose me and come find me and realize that what you’ve been looking for is not who you wanted to reach.
He only knew love in the shape of an anchor, in amber eyes and a gleamy scar and the realization that his love was larger than anyone else’s ever was. When he felt like fire, like burning down whoever dared to venture into the realm of his soul and he couldn’t do much but obey, always.
And Remus loved him, too, before he didn’t. The pride he carries with him for those few years is easily avoidable yet necessary.
“You can. You know you can.”
“I didn’t. Even before everything there was always for me that– those feelings, floating around. You were too much for me to witness and comprehend, always.”
“But we were happy, weren’t we? I’ve always taken that for granted.”
Remus sighs, looking at the maroon carpet, trying to avoid the elephant in the room: the past. When Sirius’ only present is still the blood-thirsty hound howling at the moon of the dark smoke-doused cell and Remus’ past is an empty room with the vestiges of a traitor scattered on the floor, they seem opposed to find a common ground.
“Yes. I guess so. Everyone always takes things for granted.”
“And I am sorry. Don’t know why you want to prove that I’m an asshole. I am sorry and I wish nothing happened and I wish I could spend those last few months with you. And I know you don’t believe me and would rather portrait me as a villain, still, than admit to yourself that I have some good left in me, but I— how could I not?”
“You have always been only fluent in lies.”
“I went to— there. For my mistake. I don’t even remember how. Why.”
“Because I’m a werewolf. Simple as that.”
“No. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t make sense,” he moves closer, stubbing the end of the cigarette on the ashtray. “I don’t know, Remus. All I remember is that I loved you, and I trusted you, then I stopped trusting you but I never stopped loving you.”
“Loved. Past tense.”
“I'm not going to. Say.”
“You should. I would agree. I think.”
“You are everything, Remus. My past my present and my future too. What I feel— I’ve felt , do you really think it could change? You know I’d kill and die for you.”
“You know I’ve come near both of these things more than you ever will.”
“You pretentious git I already know I’ll never beat you. Isn’t it enough?”
“No,” Remus whispers, getting closer to Sirius. If he leaned in he could graze his overgrown bear. “No. It’s not.”
His first thought is that he’s going to receive a punch. His first instinct, after Remus impatiently touches his face, letting his fingers linger for so long too long on places were no one but him has ever landed to, and after he finally leans in, filling the gap in between his mouth and Sirius’ mouth and years of betrayal and mistrust, is to run away. Sirius, in all his facade and hollow eyes and dark eyebags, feels like a little child whose hands have been held gently for the first time, one whom has not lived in love, in a caress and pinch and hug all at once. And it's scary. He is scared.
But then Sirius lets go too, caught up in his internal fire and wanting to burn once again, and it’s eager, it’s raw. It’s Remus scraping Sirius’ throat, it’s Sirius arching into him and feeling those kisses like bruises that will later leave a mark. It’s Remus biting his lip, hard, and them both falling and standing up and spinning around in a world that doomed them from the start, in an attempt to keep them away, separated.
It’s not a punch and his nose is not bleeding but the blood in his mouth tastes the same, somehow.
///
“You know when I compared you to Schopenhauer. We were fifteen, I think.”
“For no reason other than wanting me to punch you.”
“Yeah. Whatever. You do remind me of him, now. The pessimism. His hatred for Hegel.”
“Are you calling yourself Hegel?”
“Are you assuming I was talking about your hatred for me ?”
Remus hides his smile behind the green cup. “When are you not. Talking about you, I mean.”
“Haven’t done that in twelve years, actually.”
“A record, truly.”
“I’m afraid I’ll never beat it.”
“I hope you won’t.”