Work Text:
FRIDAY
9:38 PM
James is late. Sirius is used to that by now—after twelve years of friendship, you become all right with things like that. James is always late, Peter never replies to texts, and Sirius—well, Sirius is absolutely perfect, thank you very much, and no one can or ever should tell him anything to the contrary.
“We said nine, didn’t we?” Peter asks, checking his phone. Both of them are two pints in, and Peter’s cheeks are flushed red already. For a Friday night, the pub is fairly empty, just some regulars milling around the bar, the jukebox turned down low and murmuring a Beatles song.
“Yeah, we did.” Ever since James moved in with Lily, his chronic tardiness has gotten even worse. Sirius has some theories as to why, but he really doesn’t want to think too much about them.
Peter rolls his eyes. “Well, okay. Should we just get another round? We can get him to cover the next few.”
As if on cue, the doors to the pub open, and in comes James, glasses askew and hair dripping. He slides into the seat next to Peter, carding a hand through wet strands. “Sorry, lads. Got caught up at work. And it’s pissing rain out there. Weather’s absolutely disgusting.”
“Yeah, if work is a new name for Evans,” Sirius says, scoffing. He leans back in his chair. He misses when James was single, sometimes. Yes, James is happier now, and certainly less prone to insufferable bouts of pining, but now he’s all glowing and positive and in love all the time. Terrible.
James shakes his head. “No, actually, I got caught up at work—we had this backend bug that was making our payment system glitch for, like, two whole hours today. It was all hands on deck, seriously.”
Another side effect of this, or maybe just a side effect of James working a real, full-time job as a software engineer—half the time, James talks like a thirty-year-old who listens to VC podcasts for fun.
Peter shakes his head. “Well, you’re on the hook for the next round.”
“Hey, I just got here,” James says, cleaning his glasses with the bottom of his t-shirt. “And I’m dead sober, why the fuck am I paying for anything?”
“Because you’re half an hour late,” Peter says, standing up from his chair. “And I—need to take a fucking piss.”
James rolls his eyes, but he gamely returns with three pints of cider.
“Right,” James says, once Peter’s back, taking a swig from his pint. “What’s been going on with you two? Rose, bud, thorn of the week and all that.”
“We saw you two days ago,” Sirius says.
James shrugs. “Well, a lot can happen in two days.”
Peter shakes his head. “Not for me. Let’s see, what’ve I done in the last two days?” He screws up his face, as if deep in contemplation. “Went to the grocery store. Went to work. Had a bunch of meetings at work. Coded. Called Mary. Played Call of Duty. Went to bed. Went to work. Coded. Got dinner with Mary. Went to bed.”
James sighs. “All right. Sirius?”
“Same as Pete. Nothing new.” What did he do today? He woke up past noon, made himself lunch (tinned fish on toast and a browning banana), went to a bookstore and didn’t buy anything, got takeout for dinner, and now he’s here at the pub. Add in watching three-hour-long YouTube videos dissecting the failure of various amusement parks in America and napping, and you’ve got every single day of Sirius’s life for the past six months.
“Come on, I know that isn’t true,” James says. “Hey, aren’t you visiting Oxford this weekend?”
At times like this, Sirius desperately wishes James had a significantly worse memory. He shrugs. “Only for a few days.”
Peter cocks his head, looking vaguely betrayed. “You’re going to Oxford this weekend? I didn’t hear anything about this.”
“Believe me, I didn’t tell that one anything either,” Sirius says, jerking a thumb at James. “Nosy prick decided to use my phone to scroll through TikTok because his is out of storage or some bullshit—”
“I was trying to show you one specific video, okay, and I had to delete TikTok because otherwise my phone literally has a complete meltdown and starts shutting down and restarting itself randomly, I’ve talked about this a million times—”
“And he saw a text from Regulus asking when I was getting into Oxford and if I could please push back my trip a few days because he needed to reschedule a tutorial, that’s all,” Sirius finishes. “Nothing to it. What, am I not allowed to see my brother now? Who, might I remind you, I literally haven’t seen since Christmas?”
“Right, you’re going because you want to see Regulus,” James snorts. “No other reason whatsoever.”
“Fine, am I not allowed to dramatically mourn the fact that I’ll never be a uni student again?”
“I mean, I guess, but I got all my mourning out a year ago,” Peter says. “You know, when we actually graduated. And you can’t seriously tell me you miss cramming for exams or getting blackout drunk on Monday nights.”
“Sometimes I do miss Atik,” James says, sighing. “That one time they played Fluorescent Adolescent was the most alive I’ve felt in years.”
“Did you hear they’re closing it down next month?” Peter says, shaking his head. “What’ll all the poor freshers do?”
“Well, there’s always Bridge,” Sirius says. “Or Plush.”
“Sirius, no offense, but Plush is terrible,” James says.
“Homophobe.”
“Hey, I’m not wrong.” James holds up his hands. “It’s so fucking cramped, and I swear you can literally feel the sweat drip down from the ceilings onto you.”
Sirius rolls his eyes. “Right, okay.” Honestly, he misses the grime of Plush—the grime of any Oxford nightclub, actually, and the security that came with it, knowing that everyone else there was a student just like you. And he could always scrounge up at least one other person to go with him—sometimes James or Peter, but more often Marlene or Dorcas or Lily or Remus. Now James and Peter beg off going out any day besides Friday or Saturday, citing pesky things like having to wake up early for work or hang out with their girlfriends. Marlene and Dorcas are still in Oxford—Dorcas finishing up the fourth year of her Medicine course, Marlene doing an MPhil in Development Studies. Lily stopped going out after she started dating James, and Remus—
“Not that I don’t love discussing the merits of various clubs I never want to set foot in again, but back to what I was saying before,” James says. “You sure you’re going to see Regulus, and not someone else?”
“I’m going to see Regulus.”
“And I didn’t hallucinate Remus Lupin posting on his story last week that he was back in Oxford?”
“Wow, stalker much?”
“Dude, I just follow him,” James says. “Am I not allowed to use Instagram now? And I’m not the one going to visit him tomorrow.”
Okay, maybe Sirius did see that on Remus’s story. And maybe Sirius did date Remus for half of their last year at Oxford, spending almost every night in Remus’s tiny room down Cowley, cooking dinner together and watching shitty indie films together and sleeping together, legs and blankets tangled around each other. And maybe they were that insufferable couple who could never keep their hands off each other for longer than a few minutes, hands or legs always touching underneath tables. And maybe they did take a trip together to Wales before the end of Trinity term to visit Remus’s parents, and maybe they did stop in Cardiff for a day, and maybe they did kiss at the top of Cardiff Castle, and maybe Remus did buy Sirius a copy of his favorite book. And maybe they did break up in June, right after exams, because Remus was off to do a year of archaeology research in Turkey and Greece, and Sirius was off to—well. Sirius was off to wander around China on a trip he’d booked three months before he’d ever heard of Remus Lupin in the hopes of connecting with his roots, a trip that ended up being six months of fumbling every other sentence in his shitty Mandarin and sitting in coffee shops in Shanghai and Guangzhou and Beijing, wasting time on his laptop.
And maybe Sirius has been in love with Remus all this time, and maybe Remus still shows up in every other dream, and maybe he still feels a little thrill every time Remus replies to a text.
But—
They’re friends. That’s what they are. Friends with normal boundaries, who send each other memes and update each other on their lives and never, ever talk about how they used to date, never talk about the love letter Sirius wrote Remus before they both left Oxford, never talk about how Remus is the only person Sirius has ever said I love you to and meant it.
And Sirius really does want to see Regulus, okay? Yes, his brother can be a little shit, and it’s true that they only really started talking again last year, but they’ve texted practically every day since then, and to his mild horror, he’s found that he actually can enjoy Regulus’s company. Once you take away fifteen years of ingrained classism and right-wing brainwashing and add in exposure to rebellious American teenagers, you’re left with a Regulus that’s practically interesting.
So James is wrong. Sirius isn’t going to Oxford to visit his ex-boyfriend. He isn’t. Really, he isn’t.
And if he were—well, they’re both adults. They have free will. Besides, Remus had told him to come.
Or at least, when Sirius texted him, saying he’d be in town for a few days to see Regulus, Remus had replied with “oh that sounds lovely, i’ve just moved into my new place in jericho for the summer,” which had obviously been Sirius’s cue to ask Remus to grab dinner. And Remus had said “yeah sounds good, name a time and place!” so Sirius had named Tribe because he missed their lamb curry and because it would take at least half an hour for just the appetizer to come, leaving ample time for conversation, and then Sirius had said “maybe drinks after also?” and Remus had said “yes that sounds great!”
So yes, while he’s in Oxford, he’s going to hang out with his friend Remus. Who just so happens to be his ex.
But James and Peter don’t need to know all of that. For one, telling them about Sirius’s web of delusions is a good way for him to get made fun of for the next month, and possibly for the rest of his life. For another, part of him feels like saying all of that out loud—well, it almost feels like tempting fate. It feels like Remus texting him the day of saying that he sprained his ankle and can’t walk and maybe they’ll just have to see each other another time. It feels like a train strike indefinitely suspending service to Oxford and the Tube also conveniently being out of commission for the entirety of the weekend.
So instead of any of this, he says, “I told you, I really am just going to see Regulus.” Do Peter and James look like they believe him? No, but they don’t have to. He finishes the rest of his pint in a gulp. “Okay, James, you’re getting the next round too.”
“Remind me to never be late again,” James says, shaking his head.
11:48 PM
He sets his alarm for seven in the morning—there’s no way in hell he’s missing that train.
Because he’s been good all week—hasn’t written any sad Notes app poetry, hasn’t listened to his breakup playlist, hasn’t stood in the shower and cried—he allows himself one scroll through Remus’s Instagram before bed.
There’s Remus’s graduation post, standing in his gown under the Bridge of Sighs, holding a bouquet and smiling slightly. He needed a haircut then—his hair is long and curling under his ears and falling onto his forehead—but Sirius has always liked long hair better anyway. There’s a post from Greece, the ruins of the Parthenon and the blue sea like a painting, on and on into the horizon. There’s Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia, palaces and tiles and Sirius wonders why on Earth he hadn’t just canceled his trip to China and begged Remus to let him come along. Izmir, and more sea, rocks and seaweed and sand. An unarchived photo dump of cats and underlined quotes from books. Photographs from Budapest, Prague, Dubrovnik. Remus in winter, a brown checkered scarf looped around his neck, and his cheeks are pink from the cold and a curl is falling over his nose and Sirius has kissed that nose before, kissed that forehead, held those same hands that are stuffed into Remus’s coat pockets now.
Emmeline’s commented on the latest post, which obviously makes him feel great. Just fine, absolutely perfect.
He really shouldn’t be doing this either, but he clicks on her profile. He’d like to say that it’s been so, so long since he fed his parasocial relationship with Remus’s ex-girlfriend, but unfortunately that is absolutely untrue. Her bio is the same as always: emmy vuong, wales | cambridge uni, here, there and everywhere. There are a few new posts—a photo dump from Hoi An, a grainy bathroom selfie, a picture of her and a friend outside a bar in Madrid. As always, her bangs are perfectly in place, her outfit—a leopard-print miniskirt, an ironic baby tee with a black vest layered over it, brown motorcycle boots, huge sunglasses, and a bulky silver charm necklace—is perfectly on trend, and her lips are painted a glossy red. God, Remus pulls hot people.
Maybe he and Emmeline could be friends. They’re in the same boat now, after all. When he was actually dating Remus he was incredibly, inconsolably jealous of her, almost all the time, and he never once let Remus in on just how much he thought about Emmeline. Remus had done the right thing by quite literally never bringing her up, and only speaking of her briefly—well, but briefly—on the rare occasion Sirius did press him, but Sirius had nonetheless been absolutely tormented by her mere existence. He would wonder if Remus was a better boyfriend to him than he had been to her—if he had taken her on better dates—if he had texted her more—if he had liked her more—if he had loved her more.
But now there’s no use wondering about that. Now neither of them have him.
And he shouldn’t even be thinking about this at all, okay, he should be asleep, he should make sure he’s set his alarm and go to bed. He should close out of Emmeline’s profile, not even think about doing something absolutely idiotic like following her or viewing her story or, God forbid, sending her a DM. What would he even say—hey, I know you have absolutely no idea who I am, but I also dated your ex-boyfriend, want to grab coffee and talk about him?
No, he’s going to bed.
SATURDAY
8:32 AM
On the train to Oxford he watches the countryside flash by, so quickly it barely even registers. Half of the towns are the same to him anyway, gray platforms and the downcast eyes of commuters, clutching their breakfast rolls or scrolling numbly through their phones. It feels more familiar than it should.
But the sky is blue today. Blue like a robin’s egg, like a summer lake, only a few cotton wisps of clouds in the distance. He takes that as a good sign.
Regulus is sitting at the platform when the train pulls in, an open book upturned over his lap, looking like he’s a second away from nodding off. There’s no touching reunion or tears of joy at seeing Sirius, of course—Regulus’s first words to him are a loving, “Why the fuck did you bring a whole suitcase for one weekend?”
“Come on, it’s just a carry-on.” And maybe he did pack three different sweaters, five shirts, five pairs of pants, and two different pairs of shoes, but that’s just for variety’s sake.
Regulus shakes his head. “Well, I’m not dragging that all the way to Magdalen.” He stands up from the bench, tucking the book into a messenger bag and brushing off his dark jeans. “Let’s go. The sooner we get back, the sooner I can go back to bed.”
“What, no welcome breakfast?”
“We can do lunch,” Regulus says.
“You know, I think a lot of people would be really happy if they saw their brother for the first time in six months.”
“Five, and if you wanted me to be happy, you would have gotten the eleven o’clock train like I told you to,” Regulus says. He’s walking so quickly that Sirius has to almost jog to match his pace, which is a difficult task with a suitcase in hand. “Besides, both of us know you’re not here to see me.”
“Who else would I be here to see?”
Regulus scoffs. “Do you think I’m an idiot? You’re here to see Lupin, aren’t you.”
“Why would I be here to see Remus?” Honestly, a part of Sirius had sincerely believed that Regulus had entirely forgotten about Remus’s existence. After all, the first time Sirius had told Regulus about Remus, back when they were actually dating, Regulus’s response had been a simple, “Cool. Do the Magdalen accommodations have air conditioning?” Regulus had then proceeded to never ask Sirius a single question about Remus, and only after they’d broken up did he offer the great wisdom of “Shit, I’m sorry, but if it helps, he looked kind of boring.”
“He’s back in town, isn’t he? Fabian was talking about it last week.”
“Fabian Prewett? How do you know Fabian Prewett?” He’d known that Fabian Prewett was taking an extra year to do chemistry research before applying for a DPhil, but if he hasn’t completely misremembered, Fabian was still living in Keble, not at Magdalen, of all places. Unless— “Regulus, please don’t tell me you’re doing ket now.”
Regulus doesn’t say anything, just keeps walking, staring straight past Spirit and ATIK, the streets empty of drunk students and clubbers in the damp morning light.
“God, Regulus, why are you doing ket?”
“Look, I did it once, okay?” Regulus says. He’s still not looking at Sirius, but at least he doesn’t sound like he’s lying. “It was once, I hated it, I’m never doing it again, but some of my friends still buy from Fabian, and I’ll go with them sometimes, all right? He’s fun to talk to, that’s all.”
“Fine, fine.” He looks at Regulus, really looks at him, for the first time in what might be years. They still share the same sharp chin, the same high cheekbones, but somehow Regulus looks so much older than Sirius remembers. Maybe it’s his hair, no longer cropped close to his head—now it hangs down just past his ears and is parted down the middle, falling over his eyebrows. It’s even in the way he dresses. Gone are the perfectly pressed slacks and uniform dress shirts, replaced by baggy jeans and an oversized AMI hoodie. And, wait— “Did you get your ears pierced?”
Regulus shrugs. “We were drunk in Amsterdam, and Daniel dared me.”
“Who’s Daniel?”
“One of my friends.” They’re nearing High Street already—God, did Regulus always walk this fast? “A few of us took a trip last term because Ryanair was having a discount weekend.”
“Huh. Well, okay.”
“You seriously can’t say anything,” Regulus says, rolling his eyes. “How many tattoos do you have again?”
“Three, and I got them while I was sober, thank you very much.” Mostly because he wouldn’t have trusted himself to not get something incredibly stupid if he’d ended up at a tattoo parlor while drunk. “Look, I’m not judging you, I’m happy that you’re having fun in uni and all. Just—make good choices, all right? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t have done.”
“Yeah, like that’s hard.”
Sirius sighs. “You know what I mean.” Oxford really does look the same as always—the same store perpetually having a closing-out sale, the same crowd of tourists waiting by the Queen’s Lane bus stop, the same painted buildings in tidy pastel rows. “Do Ma and Ba know about it?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Regulus bends down, tosses a stray coffee cup into the bin. “Of course not. I’ll probably just take the earrings out once I go home.”
“Won’t they close up then?”
“I’m not that attached to them,” Regulus says, adjusting the strap of his bag. “It was more for the bit.”
“Right.” Was Sirius like this as a first-year? It’s true that his chosen coping mechanism was never hard drugs, or drugs of any kind, really—more getting drunk every other day and throwing himself at anyone who’d have him. Maybe that’s worse, actually. “Well, how’s everything else? How’re your classes going?”
“They’re fine.”
“Your tutors this term are all nice?”
“They’re all right, yeah.” Regulus yawns. “Not much to complain about. It’s not like E&M’s a grind course, you know.”
“Well, that’s good to hear.” They’re nearing The Grand Cafe now—he and Remus always swore that they would go at some point for high tea, but somehow they never ended up making it there. “Are you seeing anyone right now? Dating? What do you lot call it these days?”
Regulus glances at Sirius suspiciously. “You really aren't that much older than me, you know. And yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah, I’m seeing someone,” Regulus says, sighing. “Since February. She’s nice. She’s at Brasenose. She’s studying English Literature. She’s from Paris. She’s cool, I don’t know, what else do you want me to say?”
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t know, maybe?” Regulus shrugs. “We’re exclusive, but I don’t know if she wants to make anything official right now. Just because summer’s coming up and all, you know. It seems like kind of a big commitment.”
“You’ll see her in the fall.”
“Yeah, but that’s a lot of months to go.” They’re at Magdalen now, and Regulus swipes in with his keycard, nodding at the porter. “I don’t know. I think we’ll just have to see.”
SATURDAY
12:37 PM
He’s so hungry that the emptiness in his stomach is practically tangible, but unfortunately Regulus is still asleep, head turned towards the wall and snoring softly in his bed. To make matters worse, Sirius’s bed for the next three days will apparently be a thin blanket on Regulus’s floor—which is carpeted, yes, but carpeted with the kind of thin dark blue-green tufts that have probably seen everything from bloodstains to vomit.
To pass the time, he scrolls through Instagram. Lily’s posted today, a photo dump from the past month: digital pictures from a night out with Mary, a close-up of a page from Orlando, and then way too many pictures of James. James lying in bed, reading a worn copy of Catch-22. James leaning over a cup of coffee, staring intently at a crossword puzzle. James resting his head on Lily’s shoulder, both of them sitting side by side on the Tube. Honestly, at this point, they’re just rubbing it into people’s faces.
Sirius only ever posted Remus once. It was last June, back when he was already standing in a long hallway of mirrors and seeing the end reflected back to him at every turn. It wasn’t even really a picture of Remus—just the back of his head as he looked down from Magdalen Tower, the soft brown curls near the nape of his neck almost grazing the top of his shirt. He’d told himself that he would post a real picture of Remus if they stayed together past graduation, all while knowing they wouldn’t.
And he knows social media isn’t real life, and he knows that so many picture-perfect couples probably end their nights by having long, screaming arguments, and he knows that his relationship with Remus meant something, meant something real, Instagram likes and comments be damned, but still, he wishes—
Regulus rolls over in bed, groaning, and checks his phone. “Fuck. Did I not set an alarm?”
“You did not.”
Groaning again, Regulus sets down his phone and turns back to face the wall, pulling his comforter around himself tightly. “Fuck, okay. Give me ten more minutes, and then we can get lunch?”
“Yeah, sure.” Anyway, he isn’t very hungry anymore.
1:15 PM
“Remind me again, why’d you and Lupin break up anyway?” Regulus asks through a mouthful of chicken.
“Do we have to do this right now?” Sirius just wants to enjoy his pad see ew, for Christ’s sake. He spears a piece of broccoli with his fork, chewing for probably longer than necessary. The Old Tom is the same too—same laminated menus, same waitresses, same slightly sticky tables. Maybe nothing ever really changes, at least not at Oxford. Something about all the history its walls have seen—at some point they just push back, like a bulwark, steadfast against anything that could disrupt the steady churn of life inside.
Or maybe they bend so slowly, so imperceptibly, that you don’t notice anything different until it’s already been absorbed.
“Well, we could just sit in silence,” Regulus says. “Come on, humor me. I’m curious.”
“We were graduating,” Sirius says simply. “We thought long-distance wouldn’t work out, so.” Remus thought long-distance wouldn’t work out.
“Right.” Regulus doesn’t sound particularly convinced. “But he’s in Oxford now? And you’re in London.”
Sirius shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So it would’ve just been a year.”
“Yeah, and it’s just a summer for you and your girlfriend, isn’t it?”
“That’s different,” Regulus says. He takes a long sip of water. “She’s not even my girlfriend yet, first off, and you and Lupin—you guys were together for a long time, weren’t you?”
“Seven, eight months.” Seven months and a week, to be exact.
“Yeah, so you could have tried.”
“Well, we didn’t.” And that’s what matters now. What matters is that they didn’t try, and now Regulus is looking at Sirius with some mix of confusion and—God—pity, and he wants to shake Regulus and tell him to just ask the girl out, that it’s better to have tried than to just let go without a fight at all, that it’s worse to exist in the terrible what-ifs, a film reel on loop in your mind of every universe where it did work out. “Look, please, can we talk about something else? I don’t know, how’s—what’s his name—Evan doing, or something.”
“Evan Rosier?” Regulus scrunches his brow. “God, we haven’t talked in, what, a year? Last I heard, he was at Princeton.”
“Well, God help Princeton, then.” He glances at the bar, his eyes tracing the neat rows of liquor bottles on the shelf. One in the afternoon is too early for a drink, isn’t it. It might be five o’clock somewhere, but he doesn’t think that somewhere is anywhere on this continent.
3:42 PM
Regulus begs off after lunch, claiming he has an essay to finish, so Sirius finds himself wandering aimlessly around town, meandering down High Street and every alley along the way. For old time’s sake, he stops by Hertford. It looks smaller than it did his first year, back when nearly everyone he knew at Oxford resided within the college’s walls. There’s the room he used to live in, with the window facing out towards the courtyard, ivy cascading down from its stone ledge. There’s the grass he woke up on the first time he ever blacked out, near the tail end of freshers week, coming to with a stranger’s coat tucked over him like a blanket.
He leaves before he can start getting nostalgic for Pangos and tequila shots. It’s certainly too warm for hot chocolate, but he swings by Knoops anyway, gets the 43% milk and burns his tongue instantly. It’s still good, still reminds him of cold December afternoons at the library, head bent over his laptop until the sun went down, until he could make the trek back to Remus’s flat and crawl under the covers, waiting for Remus to come home.
He lingers at the storefront of the stationary shop next to Society Cafe where he once bought a twenty quid notebook that he never used—it got passed down to Lily eventually, after he found it under a pile of old sweaters that he also never wore. Hopefully, she’s actually managed to write in it.
He doesn’t go into Society. There are too many memories there, and it was always Remus’s spot anyway. Sirius just tagged along when he could, sat across from Remus at the tiny tables and watched the way Remus’s brow furrowed as he typed. He thinks that the girl working the register, with the bright pink hair and nose ring, is still the same one as last year, though.
And it’s when he’s walking down High Street again, involuntarily searching the faces for ones he recognizes, that it hits him—he really, truly isn’t a student anymore. And yes, he does run into Mattias Connelly from the Union, does exchange pleasantries in a terribly awkward two-minute conversation, but so much of the crowd is unfamiliar now. And in two, three years, when Regulus has left too—at that point, how much of Sirius will still be tied to Oxford? The city will be the same, the streets will be the same, but every set of footsteps that walks down them won’t be.
But he still has a few years. Regulus is still here, and Fabian, apparently, and Marlene and Dorcas both. There’s still time.
Actually, on that note—
sirius (4:29 PM): hey we’re still on for lunch tomorrow right?
marlene (4:31 PM): hell yeah we are
dorcas (4:32 PM): edamame okay still? they’re open sundays right
sirius (4:32 PM): think so, let’s do noon?
dorcas (4:33 PM): yes see you then love!
5:08 PM
Somehow, he’s wandered all the way down Cowley to Remus’s old flat.
And he knows that Remus doesn’t live here anymore. Of course he knows. But once—
Once, when he thought of home, he thought of this. How many days, weeks, months, did he spend in Remus’s flat, sitting at his desk, lying in his bed, cooking breakfast in the tiny kitchen. He can picture it all so clearly still: the thrifted vase on Remus’s kitchen table that always had flowers in it, always in various stages of decomposition. The mismatched armchairs, the dull orange couch with the embroidered throw pillows. The bed with the soft green comforter, the posters of The Smiths and Big Thief and Chungking Express plastered on his walls, the endless series of San Pellegrino bottles on the desk that Remus would fill and refill from the tap instead of just buying a water bottle like everyone else.
And there were the years, so many years, that Sirius spent convincing himself that he wasn’t made for domesticity, that he wasn’t made to be loved. Years spent terrified of becoming his father, of becoming his mother, years of bottling up his temper and remembering the way his mother looked when she raged at his father, painted lips smeared and her face flushed with anger. The way his father looked, standing rod-straight and unblinking, before he shook his head silently and walked away, his mother still screaming all the while. Rinse and repeat for sixteen years of his life, on and on and on until he was convinced that same anger was part of him too, that no matter how far he ran from it he would always be tied to that house and the looming shadows inside its walls.
And then—
Never once did he raise his voice at Remus, never once did he ever feel that anger rise up in him like a storm. Of course they argued, yes, of course they disagreed, but it always passed. Nothing was ever broken, nothing was ever torn. For the first time he could picture himself becoming whole, could picture himself as a partner, a good partner, laying down the foundation, the bricks, of a love to grow and grow and grow—
And then came June, and it was all over. It was June, and he was lying in Remus’s bed for the last time, and he was crying, he was begging, really, for Remus to try, saying that they could make it work, that he would do anything to make it work, that he didn’t want to lose this, and Remus was kissing him on the forehead and telling him that it would all be all right, that he loved him, that this would be for the best. He was waking in Remus’s bed to the early summer glow, the soft rumble of car engines outside, and Remus was still wrapped around him, an arm thrown over Sirius’s waist for the last, last time.
No, the flat is empty now. Or if it isn’t empty, it might as well be—all the furniture different, all the inhabitants too. There’s nothing tying him to this anymore. He needs to remember that, needs to hold it in his throat like a vow.
SUNDAY
12:32 PM
“Elephant in the room—have you seen Lupin yet?” That’s Marlene, looking far too smug for someone wearing a Frog and Toad t-shirt.
“Not yet,” he says. Suddenly, the chicken karaage in front of him is deeply unappetizing. “We’re doing dinner tonight.”
Dorcas hums sympathetically. “How’re you feeling about it? Are you nervous?”
“I mean, what’s there to be nervous about, right. He’s my friend.” He’s wanted to throw up for the past five hours.
“Well, he’s your friend, yeah, but he’s your ex first,” Marlene says. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Come on,” Marlene says, raising her eyebrows. “You’re going to tell me that there isn’t a little part of you that wants to get back together?”
“It’s okay if there is,” Dorcas adds. “I mean, you really loved him.”
He shrugs. “It was seven months.” Yes, he loved Remus, loved him enough to do stupid things like whisper I love you in Mandarin into his shirt, loved him enough to read him poems in bed, loved him enough to hope and hope and hope that it would last. But to say all that out loud—well, he would just sound pathetic. “I’m over it.”
From the look on Marlene’s face, she isn’t convinced. “Okay, let me rephrase that—do you think you’re going to get back together? Like, do you want something to happen this weekend?”
“No.” Yes. “No, I don’t think so.”
Something in him probably looks hopeful, though, because all Marlene says is, “Well, Dorcas and I were planning to get drinks with Remus tonight anyway, if you want to join. We can help you, like, assess the vibes or something.”
“You’re doing drinks with Remus? Since when?”
“Need I remind you, he was my friend first?” Marlene says, pointing at him with her chopsticks. “We made plans, like, the minute he got into town, but we kept having to reschedule because he’s been busy with research and shit. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you joining, though. I can text him now and ask.”
I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you joining, like Sirius is just a tagalong acquaintance and not someone Remus once looked at with unbearable softness in his eyes. Still, part of him needs to know—needs to know if there’s any chance Remus still looks at him like that, with so much open, unyielding want that everyone else can see it too. So he just nods, nods and says, “Yeah, sure, that sounds good,” trying to stamp down the terrible, terrible hope in his heart.
5:53 PM
Less than ten minutes until he sees Remus again, and every part of him is shaking. God, he wishes he had a cigarette. He’s already made awkward eye contact with three different couples entering Tribe, and he wonders what they must think of him. Do they think he’s waiting for a date, excessively punctual and unreasonably nervous? Maybe that isn’t so far from the truth, actually.
How many times has he played out this scenario in his head, winding and rewinding it like a scratched record? Sometimes Remus sees him and beams, wraps him in a hug and kisses the top of his head, whispering I miss you into his hair. Sometimes Remus just waves from a distance, and when they walk side-by-side there’s a great yawning gap between them that they don’t close.
Sometimes Remus looks the same—same haircut, same blue jumper, same scuffed Converse and untied laces. Sometimes Remus is wearing the glasses that he hates but Sirius loves, with the thin wire frames and square lenses. Sometimes talking to Remus is still as easy and natural as breathing, every conversation a pas de deux. Sometimes the conversation is stilted, gaps of silence that Sirius rushes to fill, all while trying to ignore the gnawing feeling that any connection they ever had has already been severed for good.
He checks his phone. 5:58 now. Maybe Remus will cancel. Maybe that’d be for the best, actually, maybe he could just go back to Magdalen and tell everyone that they were all wrong, he really was just here to visit Regulus, and he can put Remus out of his mind for good.
Maybe he has time to run to the nearest off-licence and pick up a pack of Marlboros. He hasn’t smoked in nearly a year, but he’s certain it would help now. Or maybe he should cancel. Maybe he should make up an excuse, say that James had an emergency or something, and hop on the next train back to London.
Six, now. Maybe Remus really won’t come. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and tells himself that it’ll all be fine. It will all be fine. It will all be fine.
He opens his eyes, and there, like the sun on a cold April morning, is Remus Lupin.
6:01 PM
Remus is smiling. His hair is shorter now, though not by much, still curling gently over his ears. He’s wearing a faded Oxford Archaeological Society t-shirt and baggy dark jeans, worn black boots on his feet and a brown cardigan tied around his neck. There are bags under his eyes and he looks like he hasn’t had a solid meal in weeks and Sirius thinks that he might as well be staring at a Van Gogh, he’s never seen anything more beautiful.
“Hey,” Remus says, wrapping Sirius in a brief side-along hug. Okay. They’re going with that, then. “How are you? Sorry if I kept you waiting—I swear, Jericho’s always so much farther from everything than I think it is.”
Sirius shakes his head furiously. “No, no, I just got here early. I’m fine. I’m good.” Better than good. God, what a dream it is to hear Remus’s voice again—or maybe like waking from a dream, wrapped in clean sheets and bathed in golden sunlight. “Do you want to—food?” Okay, great, super smooth.
“Yeah, let’s do it.” Remus holds the door open for Sirius, and inexplicably, he thinks of Eliot—We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
7:23 PM
And here’s how the conversation goes:
Sirius asks Remus how moving in was, and Remus says it was fine, a little stressful, but not too bad, all in all. Sirius asks Remus to show him pictures of his new flat, and Remus does, scrolling through photos of the tiny bedroom, the IKEA-approved furniture, the bare wooden floor. I know it’s kind of empty, but it’s only temporary, you know, so I didn’t think I needed to go all out and decorate, Remus says, and Sirius nods and nods and nods.
Remus shows Sirius pictures of Athens. Remus shows Sirius pictures of Marrakesh. Remus shows Sirius pictures of Istanbul.
Sirius shows Remus pictures of Beijing. Sirius shows Remus pictures of Shanghai. Sirius shows Remus pictures of Chongqing, Guangzhou, Xi’an.
Remus asks Sirius how China was, if it was everything he thought it would be, if there was anything he liked the best. Sirius says oh, it was incredible, it was so beautiful, and God, the food was unbelievable. He doesn’t say that there were weeks where he could barely manage to get out of bed before four in the afternoon, that all he did for the first three months was miss Remus and miss Remus more.
They talk about a book. Something new and hot off the press that Remus just finished reading, and Sirius forgets the name of it instantly. They talk about Remus’s colleagues, his research mentor’s three cats and glittering dinner parties, the paper Remus is writing about ethical archaeological approaches to burial analysis. And every time Remus tries to ask about him, how Sirius’s life is going, Sirius deflects it as quickly as he can, because it’s embarrassing to admit that he really doesn’t do much of anything these days.
And in some ways it all feels the same. The way Remus talks is the same—all the little inflections in his voice, the way he moves his hands, the perfect eye contact that used to make Sirius feel like they were the only two people on Earth.
But then—there’s the distance, see. And yes, they’re separated by a table, but back then, even at meals, there would always be one point of contact at least, ankles touching under the table or a hand clasped over an arm. Something to connect them. And now they sit primly on opposite sides and Sirius isn’t going to reach over, why would he when he was the one left behind, and Remus won’t do anything because he was the one who decided to leave in the first place.
But they talk. They talk about music—Remus is on an indie folk kick, apparently, and he tells Sirius that he’ll send over some songs later. They talk about how James, Lily, Peter are doing. They talk about how Remus’s parents are doing, how Regulus is doing. They talk about the weather, how unusually warm the spring has been, how they hope it doesn’t rain next week. They talk about everything and they talk about nothing, nothing that Sirius really wants to talk about—did you miss me at all, did you ever think about me, do you still miss me now—until their waitress is coming over to their table and Sirius is handing over his card to pay for their meal, ignoring Remus’s protests.
And then they’re walking out of the restaurant and Remus says he’s going to text Marlene and Dorcas and ask them where they want to meet up, and Sirius is nodding and saying sure, yeah, that sounds good. And then Remus says that the bar Marlene and Dorcas wanted to go to is closed but would they want to just come over to Remus’s place, he has wine and some cocktail supplies if they don’t mind walking all the way to Jericho, and Sirius says yeah, no problem, I don’t mind at all, and he’s still trying to work up the courage to ask all the questions, everything he’s bottled up for nearly a year, but his mouth feels like cotton and nothing comes out, nothing comes out.
9:23 PM
“God, this place is depressing.” Marlene flops onto Remus’s couch, which is approximately the color of taupe and made out of a leather so stiff that it squeaks with every one of her movements. “Would it have killed you to hang up a poster or something? This looks like a stock photo, for Christ’s sake. And this couch is uncomfortable as shit.”
“Oh, be nice,” Dorcas says, sliding in the spot next to Marlene and elbowing her gently. “Though this is a really shitty couch, Remus, please tell me you didn’t actually pay money for this.”
“Five pounds off Facebook Marketplace, baby,” Remus says. He’s standing in the tiny kitchen—really, less a kitchen than just a stovetop and a few cupboards—rummaging through a drawer. “You can migrate to my bedroom if you want, I don’t mind if you sit on my bed. Just—try not to make a mess?”
“Aye-aye, Captain Lupin,” Marlene replies, halfway to the bedroom already.
Remus’s bedroom is only slightly less gray than the rest of the flat. The green comforter has survived, at least, looking even more threadbare than it did a year ago. Marlene immediately sprawls onto Remus’s bed, beckoning Dorcas in as well, who rolls her eyes but gamely accepts Marlene’s arm around her waist. Sirius makes space for himself in a corner, hugging his knees to his chest so they all fit onto the tiny twin bed.
“Any drink preferences?” Remus calls from the kitchen. “G&T, mojito, Hugo Spritz?”
“Surprise us, love,” Dorcas calls back. She leans her head onto Marlene’s shoulder, who’s typing furiously on her phone. God, Sirius hates being single.
Silently, Marlene hands her phone to Sirius. It’s open to the notes app, and the entry only has one sentence: so have you talked to him yet???
talked to him about what, he types, handing the phone back to Marlene.
stop playing dumb, you know what. you spent ten bajillion hours with him at dinner and you didn’t talk about what you guys are?? or where you’re going to go from here???
we’re friends.
sure. He can see Marlene gearing up to write a whole essay, but he’s saved by Remus’s entrance, a tray of drinks in one hand and a chair from the kitchen in the other.
“I got lazy, so this first round is just G&Ts,” Remus says, handing the tray to Marlene, who looks like she’s just won the lottery, and setting the chair down across from the bed.
Marlene takes a long sip from her glass. “First round? Remus Lupin, the man that you are,” she says, sighing. “When did you become a fucking bartender?”
“It’s just a G&T,” Remus says, shaking his head.
“Yeah, but it’s a fucking fantastic G&T,” Marlene says. “Seriously, where were you hiding this?”
“Seriously, it’s nothing special,” Remus says, sipping from his glass. Sirius doesn’t watch the fine line of Remus’s neck, the soft motion of his throat as he swallows. “One of my coworkers back in Athens just taught me to make a few simple drinks. He’s the real expert, he used to bartend in Paris and everything.”
“Well, this is the best gin and tonic I’ve ever had by a mile,” Dorcas says. “How was Athens, Remus? Marley and I’ve been talking about going for ages.”
“Oh, it was wonderful,” Remus says, smiling. “The Acropolis in person—God, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s incredible how much of the ruins they’ve managed to restore, though it’s honestly a crime that the British Museum still has any of the Parthenon in it at all.”
“Pictures, pictures,” Dorcas demands, motioning for Remus to move closer to the bed. “Come on, do a show-and-tell.”
“Oh, I don’t want to bore everyone. Besides, Sirius’s seen all of them already.”
“No, go on, I don’t mind,” Sirius says. He’s content to just sip his drink and look at Remus—his dark eyebrows, the faint freckles that dot his cheeks, the long curl of his eyelashes. He used to think of Remus like an oil painting, all short strokes and blurring colors, but he remembers now how incomparable Remus is in sharp focus. He wishes he’d taken more photographs back then.
He doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore, but that doesn’t matter. The conversation is just radio static in the background. What matters is that he’s in the same room as Remus again, and Remus is gesturing wildly, recounting an anecdote about cats or hiking or something, and he’s looking at Remus’s eyes, like the ocean. The real ocean, green and murky and beautiful. Hazel, maybe—it says brown on Remus’s driver’s license, he remembers that, but no, they’re hazel. He hopes Remus doesn’t catch him staring, but he doesn’t think he could look away even if Remus did.
And then he hears Marlene say, casually and evenly, “You guys broke up because of long-distance, right?” And in that moment he’s wide awake again, on the shore and gasping for air.
“Uh—” Remus laughs awkwardly, not his real laugh, but the one he uses when he’d rather be six feet underground. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. We were going different places, right? Metaphorically and physically. I think we just decided that long-distance wouldn’t work out, at least not in the long run.”
“Well, you’re both back in the same place now, aren’t you?” Marlene says. She’s examining a stain in the comforter in a way that tells Sirius she really isn’t examining it at all. “I mean, I guess I still don’t totally get why you guys didn’t just do long-distance for, what, six months, a year? Or why you never gave it another try?”
“Longer, probably. And I’m leaving again soon, right,” Remus says, his tone steady, and God, Sirius wishes his tone wasn’t steady, couldn’t he sound at least a little torn up about this.
“You are?” Dorcas pushes herself up to a sitting position. “When? Where?”
“Mid-August, latest,” Remus says. “For Harvard. I, uh, found out back in March, but I only confirmed my place last month.”
“Oh, Remus, that’s so lovely,” Dorcas says, her eyes bright. “And that’s for your DPhil, right?”
“PhD, yeah.”
Sirius might murmur out a congratulations, but he’s not sure if he does. He doesn’t let himself try to calculate the miles between London and Boston, doesn’t even think about the time difference. Anyway, he knew that this was coming—had hoped for the outside chance that Remus would end up at Cambridge or Oxford but knew that Remus was applying to Harvard, Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley, knew that there was a greater possibility that Remus would wind up halfway across the world. There’s no reason for him to feel upset about this now.
“But it’s only May, isn’t it?” Marlene persists. “Why not make the most of the time you have while you can?”
“Drop it, Marley, please, just drop it.” Did Dorcas say that? No, because everyone is looking at him now. Oh. He said that. He swallows. “Really, can we please not talk about this now.”
“Sorry, Sirius.” Marlene reaches over to him, squeezing his knee. “I’m sorry. Sorry for bringing all this up.” Somehow, that doesn’t help much—he still feels cold and terrible and on the verge of emptying the contents of his stomach onto Remus’s bed. He counts the number of loose green threads on the comforter, all the wisps of cotton coming apart at the seams.
“I’ll make us another drink,” Remus says.
11:47 PM
He’s six drinks in and he’s not drunk, all right, but everything is warmer and more beautiful. And no, he can’t bring himself to really look at Remus, not anymore, but that’s all right, that’s fine. Dorcas and Remus are chatting about poetry anyway, Mary Oliver or maybe Anne Carson or Frank O’Hara. He’d like to have a coke with Remus, he really would, he very much would.
And his head is in Marlene’s lap now and she’s stroking his hair and he isn’t quite sure when that happened but he’s fine, everything is fine. Maybe after all the sorrys she said, she did keep saying I’m so sorry over and over again while Remus was making their second round of drinks, pink pink palomas, he really should eat more grapefruit, it’s supposed to be good for you, isn’t it. She’s stroking his hair and he feels like he’s a fresher again, throwing up into the sink while she rubs his back and tells him that he’ll feel better soon, that everything will be okay.
“You all right, Sirius?” And that’s Dorcas, oh, are they concerned about him now. Because they shouldn’t be, he’s all right, he’s fine, he doesn’t even feel like vomiting anymore.
“Dandy,” he says. He closes his eyes. It’s fine that he’s sitting in his ex-boyfriend’s room and he’s lying on his ex-boyfriend’s bed and his ex-boyfriend is sitting on a chair three feet away from him and the whole world probably knows how little his ex-boyfriend wants to get back together with him. If he just closes his eyes, everything will be fine.
1:43 AM
When he opens his eyes again, everything is dark. The comforter is wrapped around him, and Marlene and Dorcas are nowhere to be seen. The chair is gone too. He’s also painfully sober, his head spinning in a way that tells him he’s going to have a truly terrible hangover tomorrow.
“Remus?” he tries, sitting up slowly. “Um—what time is it?”
For a moment, he lets himself indulge the horrible possibility that the world has ended and he’s somehow managed to be the lone survivor, before the door creaks open softly. Remus’s hair is wet, and he’s wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a ratty white tank top.
“Hey,” Remus says quietly, leaning against the wall.
“Did I fall asleep?” Stupid, stupid question. Of course he fell asleep.
Remus nods. “You were out of it for a little bit. Marlene and Dorcas left about a half hour ago, but you looked like you needed the rest.”
“I’m sorry.” He blinks hard. “Sorry, I’ll—I’ll get out of your hair now.” Shit, if it’s as late as he thinks it is, Regulus is probably asleep too. How the fuck is he supposed to get back into Magdalen. He probably still has his Bod card somewhere in his wallet—maybe there’s an outside chance he could convince the porter to let him in if he waves it around with enough arrogance.
“No, it’s all right,” Remus says. His voice is so soft. “I do have a couch for a reason, you know.”
“Come on,” Sirius says, rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to make you sleep on the couch in your own flat.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Remus says. “I’ve got pillows and a blanket and everything.”
“Let me take the couch. Come on. This is your bed.”
“Nope,” Remus says. He crosses his arms over his chest. “Look, you were just telling me at dinner how you’ve been sleeping on Regulus’s floor. Just take the bed.”
He can’t quite make out Remus’s face in the dark, but he can imagine it perfectly—Remus’s mouth set in a stubborn straight line, chin jutting out slightly, eyebrows drawn tight. There’s no use in arguing. Remus has never been as much of a pushover as he seems.
“Fine.”
“Good,” Remus says, hand on the door again. “Sleep well, all right? And let me know if you need anything—just shake me awake or something.”
“Wait,” Sirius says. It comes out involuntarily, an impulse more than anything else, but—no, he needs to do this now, they need to do this now. He doesn’t feel as brave as he should but he feels braver than he has all day, all month, maybe all year.
Remus turns. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“I just—could we talk?” Every word feels like pressing on a bruise. “If you’re not too tired or anything, I mean—I just—I guess there were some things I thought we would talk about earlier, at dinner or something, but they never came up.”
“Yeah, sure.” Remus sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I lied at dinner,” Sirius says.
“What?”
“I lied when I told you I’ve been good. I haven’t been good, all right, I’ve been doing—well, I’ve been pretty miserable, actually. I feel like—every day of my life is the same, and every day is just nothing. I’ve been doing nothing with my life because I could do absolutely everything with my life so I just end up doing nothing at all.” Well, that doesn’t sound pathetic.
Remus tilts his head, looking confused. “What do you mean?”
Sirius takes a deep breath. “Like—this is going to sound so fucking privileged, all right, but I can’t think of any other way to say this—I have money, right, I have enough money that I never have to do anything with my life, and I fucking hate it. Because sometimes I think I want to be a writer and sometimes I think I want to work for a nonprofit or something and actually put some good into the world and sometimes I think, fuck it all, I’m just going to move to the fucking south of France and open a bakery and wake up at the crack of dawn to bake eclairs. I have this degree and I have things I want to do with my life, I think, but because I have this safety net I don’t do anything, I just keep wasting time. It’s like—it’s like some twisted version of The Bell Jar and those fucking figs. My figs don’t fall at all, and because of that I just sit under the tree forever.”
“That actually just sounds like the original fig tree metaphor,” Remus says. “Sorry. I know that’s not the point. Sorry. Go on.”
“Well, I didn’t study English literature, okay. My point is—my point is just that I have genuinely no idea what I want to do with my life, and everything I do care about doing seems too big for me to change anyway. Like, okay, the NHS is fucked, we’ve got more child poverty today than we’ve had in decades, and the UK’s morphing into TERF island. What can I do about that? When I was sixteen or seventeen, I’d go, okay, well, I’ll go to Oxford, study PPE, and then I can run for office or work for a political party and try to shape change from within. And now I look around and think, well, Labour’s not exactly making any radical changes out here, the Greens have, what, less than five seats, and who the hell would vote for me? And I know that’s not the right way to think about it, I know that there are still things I can do, I know it isn’t as hopeless as all that, but—it feels that way. It just feels like I’m stuck. Peter and James and Marlene and Dorcas and Lily and Mary—hell, everyone we know—they all have real jobs and they all have things they care about and they’re all doing shit with their lives, and all I do is sit at home and think about how fucking useless I am.”
“Sirius, you’re twenty-two,” Remus says, with all the earnestness of a school counselor. “You know you don’t have to have everything figured out, right? Almost no one our age does.”
“But you do,” Sirius says. “That’s the problem, you do. You’re going to Harvard, all right, you’re going to get your PhD and then you’ll become an archaeologist or a professor. You’ve got your whole life laid out in front of you.”
“Sirius, come on, that isn’t true at all,” Remus says, leaning back on the bedframe. “Look, I genuinely have no idea what I want to do half the time, but academia makes it easy for me to just keep applying to things and see where that takes me. Besides, what you want to do can change over time, you know? You’ll figure it out. I know you will.”
“See, that’s the problem.” He scrunches the comforter in his hands. “The only thing I’ve ever known I wanted to do was stay with you.”
He feels the silence wrap around him like cold air, feels his stomach tighten and twist. He pulls the comforter around himself tighter. Being with Remus used to remind him of tending to a campfire, warmth sparking up from bright embers. All there’s left now is smoke.
“It’s late,” Remus says quietly. “We should go to bed.”
“Remus, come on. You know I still love you, right?” It’s not the right thing to say, he knows it isn’t, but he might never get a chance to say it again.
Remus exhales. “Yeah. I know.”
“So?”
“Sirius, you know—you know I think you’re incredible, and you have so much to offer the world. You know I think that.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I know it isn’t,” Remus says. “I just—I think we might be too young for something like that. I don’t think that you should just shape your entire life around another person, you know?”
“I mean, James and Lily and Peter and Mary are making it work, aren’t they?”
“Well, they’re all in London, aren’t they? And they all want to be there long-term, they have jobs and apartments and everything. And I’m—Sirius, I’m only at Oxford for the summer, and then I’ll be at Harvard for five, six years, and who knows where I’ll be after that.” Remus pulls his legs up onto the bed. Their ankles are touching now. “I can’t just ask you to follow me. You want to do things and see the world, I know you do, I know you will, and I don’t want to—I can’t—tie you down like that.”
“You wouldn’t be tying me down, okay? This is what I want.”
Remus shakes his head. “At some point, you would stop wanting that, and you would just start resenting me. I think—I just think it’s probably better for us to stay friends, you know?”
“Yeah.” One of the threads in the comforter is really coming loose now. He hopes Remus has sewing needles. “I just—I think I just thought—I thought there was a chance, you know? That we would try again or something, I don’t know. Just—so many people break up and get back together. Hell, I think Peter and Mary have broken up three times in the past year. I guess—I guess I don’t understand why we can’t be like that too.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Remus says. “There’s been so much hurt already, you know? I don’t think you can just ignore all of that.”
“What if we could?”
“I really don’t think it works like that.” Gently, Remus moves Sirius’s hand away from the thread. He didn’t realize he was still tugging at it. “It’s not like a paper cut. You can’t just slap a plaster over it and pretend nothing ever happened. And all those couples—well, we aren’t them. I’m nothing like Peter, and you’re nothing like Mary.”
Sirius swallows. “I just wish I hadn’t gone to China. I wish—I wish I’d just gone with you to Greece or something.” And then they could have stayed together, and Sirius wouldn’t be sitting here, three feet away from Remus in his bed, aching for contact.
“But we can’t go back in time,” Remus says. “Even if there’s some world where time machines do exist—everything that’s happened has already happened. You can’t keep wondering about all the what-ifs, all right, it’ll just drive you mad.”
“I know.”
“And Sirius—I don’t think you’ll do this, I don’t think you will, and I really hope you don’t—please don’t wait for me, all right?” Remus continues. “I don’t want you to stop living your life the way you should be because of me.”
“Don’t worry,” Sirius says, trying to smile. “I’ve watched Before Sunset too. No train stations for me.” Everything is blurry now, but he isn’t going to cry. He isn’t.
“Good.”
“But—God, sometimes, I really wish you would be wrong more often. I really wish that I could just be right.”
Remus looks down. “I don’t think there’s really any right or wrong here. It’s not a test, you know. It’s just life.”
“Yeah.” He lets this silence stretch on. He isn’t going to sleep well tonight, he already knows. He’s going to toss and turn and wonder if Remus is tossing and turning in the other room, on the horrible gray couch. The sun might be golden tomorrow or the sky might be gray but it really won’t matter, none of that will matter. He’ll be in Remus’s flat and he’ll drink coffee or tea from Remus’s mug but he won’t be Remus’s, that apostrophe won’t belong to him. It hasn’t in months, in almost a year. Maybe it never will again, and he needs—he needs to be fine with that, needs to be able to say it aloud and have it sound easy, natural, not like he’s reading from a terrible, terrible script. Acceptance, that’s what they call it. The final stage. He needs to let go of the ledge now. There will be soft grass at the bottom. He needs to let go. He needs to let go.