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3:00am. It was 3:00am. Sirius couldn't sleep. Couldn't do anything but lay in bed thinking and counting Remus' breathes as the other slept. It was hard for him to breathe, though. It was 3:00am, and Sirius was standing in front of the bathroom mirror of the tiny flat he shared with his boyfriend, Remus. He stood, and he stared. Just stared. Stared too long until it wasn't him at all. It was his mother, his cousin. Same eyes, same nose, same hair. Same, same, same. Every twisted and rotten part of him rearing its head and gnawing at him.
He pushed off from the sink, moving around the flat to the kitchen with a silent and mechanical franticness. He felt as though there was something...something bubbling up and ready to explode just under his skin—in his throat, ready to scream. It showed in the way his hands shook and the way he nearly tripped over his feet.
But he didn't.
He never did. Not really. Not truly. Not when he was like this and the halls of the home he'd built with Remus—even with Remus—started looking too much like the ones he'd grown up in.
Scissors in hand, he returned to the bathroom, flicking on the harsh light and squinting, praying that Remus wouldn't see it and wonder why he was up. Prayed he wouldn't wake up and worry, and look at Sirius with those unbearably kind eyes. Sirius wouldn't do shit, if Remus just looked at him. How could he? But he needed to. Fuck, he really did. There was an itch that nearly hurt and he had to get to it before it spread.
He was emotional, and impulsive; everything his mother said he was.
Doing what was a probably awful job—seeing as he was both exhausted and somewhat panicking—Sirius took the scissors to his hair, cutting and cutting and cutting, watching as the black curls fell around him, ringing him in a crime-scene of his breakdown. It was only after he'd cut an inch or two off that he stopped and looked at himself, the knot in his chest loosening a bit.
It was always his hair.
He never really knew why. Sirius loved having it long. Though it had started as a rebellion against his mother, he actually grew rather fond of how it looked. That, and the freedom it gave him. Just a little, but it was his. His to keep, his to hold onto. His.
But sometimes, everything Sirius tried so hard to work through resurfaced, and suddenly, the face in the mirror looked familiar in a way that gave him chills. In a way that left him swaying in a daze, or laying in a bed unable to sleep, or avoiding mirrors and yet being undeniably drawn to them; so horrific he couldn't look away. The same face that haunted his nightmares was his own. The one that had shunned him and hurt him and made him think, for years, that he was unlovable, and unworthy. His mother, now him.
So he would snap. Usually, that meant impulsively cutting his hair, just enough to get the weight off his shoulders. Though, he once phoned Mary half in tears once, and half an hour later, the two had been busy dying his hair with streaks of red. Which, he might add, did look quite good on him.
But that wasn't the point, was it?
With a sigh, Sirius cleaned up the bathroom, and put the scissors away. For a minute, he just existed—took in a moment of peace, standing in the kitchen, the city alive around them but right there, at that moment, he was still.
The moment passed when he heard a car honking outside.
He hauled himself back to bed, carefully laying down beside Remus (and thanking whatever gods that his boyfriend was still asleep). It was fine. All fine.
Turning onto his back, Sirius closed his eyes, making a list in his head. Something that helped him make sense of it all; something to calm down.
He was beside Remus.
His hair was shorter now.
He'd run away from Grimmauld Place nearly five years ago.
Over and over, he turned the things around in his head, letting them lull him to sleep.
* * *
When Sirius woke up the next morning, it was to Remus staring at him, hair mused with sleep and a tired, but unfairly adorable smile on his face.
It almost hid the slight concern in his eyes.
Sirius hummed, moving closer to Remus and burying his face in the crook of the his boyfriend's neck. Remus just chuckled, wrapping an arm around him, and for a moment, they simply were.
But Remus knew him too well to leave it at that.
"You cut your hair," his boyfriend mumbled, voice quiet and groggy. Remus ran a hand through his hair. "Rough night?"
"Mhm."
"You're very eloquent in the mornings."
Sirius huffed, peaking up at Remus, who grinned down at him. Sirius met it with a glare, for one second, two seconds, and at three, his expression faltered. He shrugged, which his boyfriend took in stride. Just nodding; knowing. Sirius smiled gratefully. Remus always knew. Just knew. Knew when to pester him, and when to leave it. Knew when something was done out of a spur-of-the-moment idea, or out of a need. Remus knew, and that was that.
Later that morning, while the two made breakfast—and coffee, because frankly, neither could survive without it—Remus kept running a hand through Sirius' hair, or playing with the curls.
"It looks good, like this," he'd say, smiling.
Sirius would smile back, because he said that when he had dyed his hair, too. And every other time he cut it, or changed it in one way or another.
He allowed Sirius the space to be what he needed to be: emotional and impulsive, and everything his mother told him he was. Only, he did it without reprimanding Sirius. He did it with a love and care that Sirius had never felt in such a way.