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Of Clocks and Cobwebs
“The worst thing in the world can happen, but the next day the sun will come up. And you will eat your toast. And you will drink your tea.”
- Rhian Ellis
“It’s mortifying to be the one who remembers.”
- Ryan O’Connell
“I missed you,” Sirius whispers into the darkness, and he feels Remus shift next to him in the bed, feels his exhale brush against his cheek, knows he’s captured his attention now.
There’s more, of course. There’s always more. But Sirius doesn’t know how to talk about it and Remus doesn’t need him to, not really.
Remus stays quiet, letting Sirius find his next words, but his hand reaches for Sirius’ under the sheets, and their fingers intertwine, strong and sure.
It hadn’t been as bad this time. Sirius can practically hear James’ outrage over that statement. It’s always bad. Even if it’s only the tiniest bit of bad, that’s still bad enough , he’d say.
But James was snoring across the room and Sirius could think what he wanted to right now, could let the words he kept tucked away in the crannies and the shadowed spaces of his mind float free through his lulling, sleep-drawn psyche. The bed was warm, Remus was solid next to him, and Sirius could admit it to himself.
It hadn’t been that bad.
She’d messed with his mind, of course. Shoved and picked and scratched her way in through the shaking doors, slithering across the cracked tiles, climbing up the cobwebbed walls of a life tucked away. Sirius had been dizzy with it, her raw power tightening around his thoughts, squeezing and choking until he was gasping on the floor, reliving it all, the good and the bad and the shameful and the parts he had tried so, so hard to keep, just for himself.
It was all laid bare, in her suffocating grip.
But it hadn’t been that bad. It wasn’t like it was his throat she’d been squeezing.
Remus would hear about it another time. Maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years. Sirius could never talk about it right after. Not the most recent stuff, at least.
“Are you asleep?” Remus whispers now, squeezing Sirius’ hand lightly, just once.
“No.”
“Okay.”
Sirius listens to Remus’ even breathing.
“I missed you too.” Remus’ nose nudges his ear and then his soft lips are ghosting along Sirius’ cheek. “Love,” he adds, with an undercurrent of reverence in his voice as if getting to call Sirius that is something godly, some sort of miracle. As if Sirius himself is divine.
Sirius turns onto his back. He’s not heading away from Remus, just adjacent to him. It’s easier this way. He still clutches Remus’ hand in his own, gripping it tighter.
“Do you remember when we came back after winter hols in third year?” His voice sounds weirdly strained, even to his own ears. He shakes his head a little, as if that’ll clear his throat like an Etch A Sketch.
“Yeah,” Remus breathes.
“You looked good.” Sirius gulps in some air, stretches out his unoccupied hand on top of the sheets. It’s steadily getting sweatier. “You seemed happy.”
Remus isn’t sure where this is going, but he patiently waits for Sirius to get there. The taller boy can be so pushy sometimes, giving Sirius that unimpressed look – the one that makes Sirius want to snog him senseless – and telling him to quiet down as he’s studying for Charms, ladling broccoli onto Sirius’ plate in the Great Hall even as Sirius makes a nasty hand gesture at him, refusing to play chess with Sirius until he agrees to play by the actual rules and not just try his best to arrange the pieces as if they’re attending a fancy dinner party and he’s been tasked with creating the seating chart.
But in moments like these, when Sirius needs time, and a calming presence, and a steady stream of soft, gentle love, Remus could wait placidly next to him for an eternity, letting the silence wash over them like cooling, lapping waters.
“I was happy,” he confirms, his words quiet in the silence and the dark and the tiny space between them. “Mum gave me One Hundred Years of Solitude that year for Christmas. It sparked my love of magical realism.”
Sirius wants to smile, achingly so. Moony and his books – the greatest love story of all time.
Instead, he takes a deep breath, forcing the words out before he can squish them back into the cobwebbed walls of his mind.
“You and James and Pete, you all seemed happy, and the girls were laughing at dinner. I remember them laughing. And it was like the entire world had moved on but I –”
He breaks off, gargling verbs in the back of his throat.
Remus squeezes his hand again, kisses him hard on his shoulder this time. He gives Sirius space, time, a whole galaxy of patience and quiet and comfort. I’ll wait, he yells with gentle touches. It’s okay, he promises with feather-light lips.
“I came back, and everyone else was here, at Hogwarts, with Christmas presents and stress about new classes and overdue library books, but I was still there in the study and his magic was on top of me, was going through me, was everywhere and –”
He’s crushing Remus’ hand. He can feel Remus’ fingers giving way beneath his, twisting under Sirius’ distress. He forces his hand to relax, forces his mind to focus on the heat of Remus’ palm pressing into his. Forces his own love to be less violent.
“I look at the third years and they look so small, Moony. So small.”
Remus closes the distance between them, rests his chin on top of Sirius’ hair so Sirius can simply turn his head slightly to the right and be nuzzled in the crook of Moony’s neck.
“I think sometimes I’m still thirteen, in that study, with his pain on my skin and my sweat on the floor.” He burrows deeper into Remus’ neck, squeezing his eyes shut tighter as he confesses. “Sometimes I think I never made it out.”
A wounded noise comes from Remus’ throat. His free arm begins to run through Sirius’ hair, placating him, and Sirius isn’t sure if it’s more for his own benefit or Remus’, but it’s comforting nonetheless.
“You didn’t deserve that.”
“I know.” It’s getting easier to mean it.
They lapse into silence for a while, and Remus begins humming lightly, absentmindedly, just under his breath. Sirius follows the notes in his mind, watches them as they jump and fall, gliding through the air like ribbons on the wind.
The song is soothing, drawing him further and further towards sleep.
“Do you remember being five?”
Remus tenses, abruptly cutting off the humming. His hand freezes in Sirius' hair. They both know what Sirius is really asking. Do you remember the attack?
Seconds go by. Sirius gives him time. Eventually, Remus relaxes again, his hand resuming its petting.
“No,” he answers, honestly.
“Yeah,” Sirius agrees. “They say it’s like that. Some people block it all out, can’t remember a single thing.” He swallows, ripping through cobwebs. “Others relive every detail.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sirius shrugs clunkily from his position entwined with Remus. “Not your fault.”
“I’m still sorry, love.” A kiss to Sirius’ head. That reverence again. “I’m sorry you have to remember.”
Sirius sighs out, slow and controlled, releasing dust and debris and years and years of cruel, unrelenting memories. He feels his heartbeat slow, feels his mind go slightly fuzzy in that half-awake state, feels his body relax into the steady, solid blanket of Remus around him.
“I think you’re helping me forget,” he whispers as he drifts off into sleep.
That night, Sirius dreams of broken clocks that have stopped ticking and the horologists who bring them back to life.