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Curtains were drawn, the world barely awake when Sirius found himself stirring in bed. Not even the sun found it appropriate to be awake at such an hour, so why on earth was Sirius?
He had always been a light sleeper, from early childhood to the adulthood he now lived every day. Even now, as much as a noise out of the ordinary could wake him with ease. He could perhaps have blamed it on the soft sound of birds chirping just outside his window, had it not been for the heavy snoring clouding the room and taking precedence.
Soft blue eyes moved, still tired and full of sleep, yet they found the source of the sound, a man Sirius found he could hardly be mad at, even if he woke him up at..
He paused, glancing towards the clock. It wasn’t even five. It was like being back in their school dorm, living with James again, Sirius thought with a small huff. It had been more years than he could count, but it quickly felt like yesterday.
He rested his head on the man’s shoulder like he had so many nights before. His pale face pressed into heated, scarred skin, yet he found nothing but comfort. He felt Remus’s slowly greying hair tickling his neck. While Remus had chosen to embrace the grey, perhaps because he’d started going grey many years earlier, Sirius had been a bit more hesitant to do so, when the pale streaks began decorating his otherwise youthful black hair.
Remus had caught him plucking them out in the mirror, arms wrapping around his husband’s stomach.
“Why?” he’d asked.
“Because they make me look old,” Sirius had replied.
“You are old, Sirius. We both are. Together. Isn’t it wonderful?”
After fighting a war the two had been prepared to sacrifice their lives to see end, Sirius couldn’t do anything but agree. It was wonderful. He was thankful every day. Even as he lay, just before five in the morning, listening to his lanky husband snore on a day that was like no other but like so many before at the same time.
Sirius could have laid there for hours, watching Remus’s chest rise and the calm expression on his face. Oh, how it had taken years to get to that point. To a point where Remus slept through a full night, to a point where he didn’t constantly hold an expression of worry, brows knitted together.
His face still held the lines, of course, his entire body held the lines of the life he’d led. Luckily, amongst scars and lingering frowns were also crow’s feet and smile lines.
Sirius’s pale hand moved through the air, like a ghost of a man he used to be—a younger man. His fingers moved against the lines on his husband’s face, smoothing them out. They both seemed younger then—like they used to be—but after many years, Sirius found he didn’t chase that version of them any more.
His hand moved upwards, a hand with a ring sparkling despite missing a few stones, with an arm covered in faded tattoos. Calloused fingers moved through greying hair. Remus leaned into the familiar touch, welcoming it like he had so many times in the past and like he would so many times in the future.
He felt Remus’s warm breath against his arm as another snore left the man. Remus had always been a snorer, but it had worsened with age.
Not that Remus ever acknowledged it. He’d assured Sirius he was simply hearing things, despite the knowing look in his eyes. Not many things went unsaid between them any more but they’d decided that Remus’s snoring could be one of them.
Sirius glanced towards the clock again. Just past five. He could get up then and prepare breakfast. With Sirius’s skills in the kitchen, it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise if an edible meal wasn’t done until much later.
Remus wasn’t easy to leave. He never had been, but then, as his arm tightened around Sirius’s waist it was even harder. Sirius needed more convincing to leave than he did to stay, but eventually, he managed to pull himself from the bed.
He watched as Remus moved to try and grab onto what he assumed would be Sirius, though it was nothing more than the covers the man had just abandoned. There was a time when Remus would have woken at the man moving, at the indent in their bed and the man missing, especially after all those years they’d already been separated, but now he curled up as Sirius pressed a kiss to his forehead.
In most cases, a birthday meant going all out. Stacks of food in the morning, waffles, pancakes, jams, bacon, eggs, the whole lot. Maybe even a small cake with a candle for Remus to blow out before he had his tea.
Sirius had gone all out for Remus for years, from the very first birthday of his that they’d celebrated together. He remembered it like it was yesterday, like he did with most of their times together, even after all these years. That’s simply what happens when you have to cling desperately enough to memories that would have otherwise been ripped from you—they become etched in your very being. Sirius had cursed it, back then, that that was the only way he could have those memories again, but now he welcomed them for what they were rather than what he wanted them to be.
He remembered all the yearly preparations, the planning, the sneaking around. The way Remus got suspicious every time as if the man had forgotten his birthday was coming up. He remembered the parties, with James dancing around on tables or flying his broom in the common room, always the centre of attention. He remembered Peter almost letting their secret plans slip every time he could. That memory was more bittersweet than the rest.
Mostly, the memories were good, even the ones tainted by Peter. Sirius had learned to think about the positive, focus on the positive. It had been good back then, was his reasoning, even if it had all gone to shit later. He hadn’t always thought about that, but Remus in all his wisdom had eventually gotten to him.
It was that same part of Remus that had eventually convinced Sirius that the Remus he slept next to now didn’t need the same kind of birthday party as the Remus Sirius used to wish he could sleep next to did.
Instead, Remus got the quiet birthday he wanted. And while it wasn’t what Sirius would have done, nor wanted for his own birthday, it was what made Remus happy and thus what Remus would get.
A nice cup of tea, a bit more expensive than the usual one Remus would get—Sirius didn’t have the same troubles splurging on even the smallest of things, not in the way Remus did. Remus would always complain that the tea was too expensive, that they didn’t need it, yet it was almost the only one he reached for when they had it.
With tea, he’d have his toast. With all the different kinds of spreads, Sirius could pull from the cabinets.
It used to be accompanied by bacon and eggs but a few years back Sirius had made the fire alarm go off while cooking the bacon and after being unable to turn it off for way too long, the two had agreed that toast would be just fine. With Sirius’s skills in a kitchen, even toast was a bit of a struggle at times.
How long did toast need to be toasted exactly, to get to that perfect golden brown they both liked so much? Sirius wondered as he watched the slices of bread disappear into the machine.
While he wondered he could find Remus’s spreads. He’d opened the cabinets only to realise he should probably put the kettle on first. It was a struggle to not bump his head into multiple cabinet doors as he moved around.
The apartment was mostly quiet, save for Sirius’s mix of whistling and humming. He’d finally grabbed the different spreads, putting them out on the round table located in the corner of their kitchen.
He’d had to remove the decorative candles and the empty vase to fit everything on there, but they’d return eventually, when either of them would go ‘where did our vase go?’ either weeks or sometimes months later.
Sirius took a moment to glance towards the half open bedroom door, catching a glance at Remus still sleeping in bed. He’d shifted, his face half mushed into his pillow, brows pushed upwards, softening his expression.
By the time Sirius allowed himself to grow distracted, it was only because the smell of burnt toast had started invading his nostrils, forcing his attention elsewhere.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Sirius grumbled to himself, words vibrating against his lips as he went to push the tiny cancel button on the toaster that he ordinarily struggled to find. Of course, even then, with the smell of burning toast filling up his nostrils, the kitchen and surely the rest of the house, nothing was out of the ordinary.
By the time the slices of toast finally popped out of the machine they were followed by hints of flowing smoke surrounding them. Deep brown in the middle and black around the edges and undoubtedly dry.
The sound of the toast popping out of the toaster had covered up the stir of the man in their bedroom, but his footsteps were clear as day. Large feet tapped against their wooden floor as Remus walked from the bedroom to the kitchen doorway. They’d taken the door off the hinges years ago, during the first few months of settling in the apartment.
“What’s that smell?” Remus’s voice was still low and held a tiredness Sirius had abandoned in the bed with the previously snoring man. He leaned on the door frame, long, hairy legs exposed, just like the rough skin of his stomach as he stretched so his shirt lifted.
Sirius turned and looked over, toast dropped on the table. He hadn’t thought to grab a plate. “What smell?”
“That burnt smell.” Remus could feel the other man’s eyes on him, returning the look—the look that started at his feet and ended on his face.
The taller man moved closer, standing in front of his husband. Sirius wondered briefly if perhaps the other could see the toast on the table behind him. “There’s no burnt smell.” With a glint in his eyes, Sirius swayed back and forth on his feet. His expression wasn’t as tired as Remus’s, but instead held a teasing grin as he reached up and held the back of his hand to the other’s forehead. “Are you having a stroke, Moony?”
A huff left Remus in return, a warm exhale out the slightly flared nostrils of his partially hooked nose. Sirius kept his smile, a smile of a man who, even after all those years, got away with way too much.
“Don’t joke about that,” The taller started. Just as Sirius had suspected, Remus was able to see the toast over him and as he sneaked his arm around the other’s waist he caught glimpse of the blackened bricks of bread. “Did you burn the toast?”
Sirius wrapped his arms around Remus’s neck, long, pale fingers finding his hair. He played with the softly curling pieces at the nape of the man’s neck before leaning up and pressing a soft kiss to Remus’s lips, smiling against him.
“I didn’t not burn the toast,” he chuckled before stealing a second kiss. Remus smelled like bed and tasted like sleep. A horrible combination for someone who’d gotten up far too early.
“It’s way too early for breakfast,” Remus reasoned as a warm hand ran over the small of Sirius’s tattooed back. “Which means it’s definitely too early for you to burn down the complex,” he pointed out.
Sirius leaned into the touch and let out a sound that vibrated against the back of his throat. “I wasn’t going to burn down the complex. I’m a perfectly good cook. The fire alarm didn’t even go off,” he pointed out. That earned him a chuckle and a shake of the head.
Sirius rolled his eyes dismissively, turning around to turn his attention back to the toast. Despite it’s burnt state it had started getting cold. Meanwhile the kettle was boiling just out of sight.
“It’s not every day you turn—”
“Twenty-five,” Remus interrupted, arms wrapped around Sirius’s waist, his face pushed into the other’s neck, past greying black curls and against tattooed skin. He pressed soft kisses to a half-moon hidden partially behind Sirius’s ear.
A half giggle left the shorter man, though whether it was from Remus’s comment or the placement of his kiss was anyone’s guess.
“More like twenty-fib,” Sirius countered, turning his head to look at Remus with tired blue eyes. “What happened to embracing this whole ‘old man’ thing?” He teased.
Remus rolled his eyes and poked the other’s sides. “Says the one who got up at what, five? Come back to bed, love,” he grumbled, nose poking the other’s skin.
With lips parted to complain, Sirius looked at the man, though before any proper sound could leave him, Remus was picking Sirius up from the ground. His grasp wasn’t as sure as it once had been and the ache in his muscles was different, but he managed to lift Sirius enough that he could start backing away.
“Remus! Your back! Your hip! Your everything, you old man, put me down!” he laughed. He would have taken more convincing a few years ago, but Remus put the other down, arms still wrapped around his waist.
“Come back to bed. You can burn the complex down and tell me I’m old later,” Remus urged, a smile curling onto his lips as he looked at the man. Sirius rolled his eyes but sighed and finally relented.
“The kettle is still on,” Sirius countered as he walked with the other. “The kettle is electric, it’ll turn off,” Remus added as he plopped back on the side of their bed. He reached out for the man. “And it can wait. Right now my only birthday wish is to lay in bed with my husband. Maybe steal a few kisses.”
Sirius smiled, pushing the hair out of Remus’s face before tilting his chin upwards and pressing a lingering kiss to his lips. “Anything for my Moony.”