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He had been waiting for this moment: Remus standing in the doorway, staring at him, so close to him that if he reached out his hand… Only Remus in his mind had been younger, in his early twenties. He had tried to remember Remus wasn’t twenty-one anymore. Nor was he. More than a decade had passed. But his mind couldn’t really hold anything these days and so he kept forgetting. His wrecked mind. Remus would see him and immediately know what he had lost. That he had lost his mind. That was it. That was why he had been terrified when the old man had told him to go to Remus’ place for the time being. Remus would see him and know there was nothing inside of him and nothing…
No. No. This was exactly why he’d been rehearsing this. Over and over. He hadn’t been able to make Remus look older than twenty-one but he’d been rehearsing, wasn’t that what was important anyway? He’d been going over the conversation they would have, sometimes quietly and sometimes aloud which was convenient anyway, wasn’t it, he still remembered how to talk. He still remembered he had a voice. And yes, he would stand on Remus’ doorstep like this, and knock like he just had. And the conversation they would have, that he had thought about over and over again.
Hi.
A good start. A safe start. He would smile at Remus, not that empty smile he sometimes had when he tried to remember the expressions his face had once known, no, but rather a genuine one. He’d smile just the way he had all those years ago, only sometimes it was difficult to remember it had been years and not, say, days? Or decades. Sometimes it felt as if he’d been there his whole life and some others, that over and over again he’d died and ended up there. But he wouldn’t let that show on his face. He would say hi, Remus.
Hi, Sirius.
Dumbledore told me to come here. Most days, he remembered Dumbledore’s name. To lie low. With you.
Oh, Remus would say, just like he had when they had been young, just like the days in their flat that used to smell of garlic because of the restaurant downstairs. It had probably been late and they had been drunk, only he didn’t remember the details anymore, he only remembered the way Remus had smiled. Oh, Sirius. Come in. I’ll make you tea. This new Remus, this Remus who had grown up without him, would be polite and well-spoken and not breathless like the Remus he remembered. But the smile would be the same. And that would be how he would still know that Remus -
“Sirius?”
He blinked. The sun was too bright. The wind was too loud. His limbs were too heavy. And he couldn’t breathe. He was standing on Remus’ doorstep and Remus was watching, not smiling at all, only worried, he could see it in Remus’ eyes and… and fuck, Remus was staring at him. Remus saw straight through him. Remus saw the void. He shouldn’t have come.
“Fuck,” Remus said, which was strange because the Remus he remembered never swore, never, they had teased him about it. Later he had tried to make Remus swear. Later, when they had already been… but he wasn’t sure what they had been. He had lost that among other things. “Fuck, Sirius,” Remus was saying, his voice much hoarser than when he had been twenty-one, “you’re shaking. Come in.”
“Remus,” he said. His voice sounded dry, as if he hadn’t drunk water the whole day. Had he? He was pretty sure he had. He almost laughed but caught Remus’ eyes. Remus looked so old. Damn that they were old. And Remus had lived fourteen years he knew nothing about.
Remus grabbed him by his arm. He stared at the place where Remus’ fingers held him. It was odd, the way Remus just touched him, as if both of them were there. But Remus’ grip grew more impatient and he let Remus drag him through the door into the house and to what looked like a living room. Remus pushed him towards the sofa, no, Remus walked him there and then let go of him and he fell. He was too tired. It had been too long since October 1981 when everything had stopped. It couldn’t have been fourteen years.
Remus made him tea and asked questions that didn’t make sense, like where he had been and what he had been doing and if he was alright or not. He didn’t say much. He was pretty sure Remus had made him tea before, too, and then they had kissed, or maybe he’d dreamed that. He drank the tea and then let Remus take the empty cup from between his hands and pull him from the sofa and push him to the bedroom, where Remus made him lie down in a bed that smelled of Remus. It was as if Remus was all around him, everywhere, so close he could never lose Remus again. He pushed his nose against the mattress until it got difficult to breathe. Surely they had kissed. There was a lot he didn’t remember but he remembered that. It had felt real. They had been in the kitchen, no light coming through the windows, only Remus’ hands on his back, light but steady even though Remus’ face had looked frightened as hell. He remembered, only as he sank deeper into Remus’ bed which smelled of Remus, it all started to feel like a dream.
He had kissed Remus and Remus had kissed him back.
He had held his hands on Remus’ hips, on bare skin that had been damp with sweat, and Remus had called his name over and over again in a breathless voice.
Sirius.
**
They were in the Shrieking Shack. His thoughts went in circles: kill Peter, save Harry, kill Peter, save Harry. But Remus was there, too. He didn’t know what to do about Remus. Remus smelled of everything familiar and everything that was missing. Was he a human already, yeah, he was, he wanted to kill Peter but Remus held him back, or was it that he wanted to kiss Remus, he couldn’t remember. There were new wrinkles in the corners of Remus’ eyes and new sadness in the way his mouth settled.
“Sirius.”
There was light coming from somewhere. He kept blinking until his eyes opened. Remus was sitting on the edge of the bed with a cup of tea in his hands. The blanket had blue flowers in it and Remus was old.
Not a dream, then.
“Hello,” he said and cleared his throat.
“Hello,” Remus said and held the cup of tea in a way that suggested Sirius should grab it. He sat up slowly, squeezing the blanket tight against his stomach. “You slept for five hours. It’s evening already.”
“Okay.”
“You should probably sleep some more. But eat something first. I made you a sandwich.”
“Remus,” he said and then swallowed. “Thank you.”
“You don’t look much better than when I last saw you,” Remus said and flinched. “I’m sorry.” Sirius shook his head. Remus eyed him cautiously as if trying to hold something back and failing. “I knew you were on the run but I kind of had this idea that you were somehow doing better anyway. You always…”
“What?”
“You always found a way.” Remus bit his lip. “I don’t think that’s true anymore, considering what… happened to you. In the end.”
Sirius thought he remembered that. Remus had been certain that everything would turn out at least manageable for Sirius. Remus had thought Sirius would live through it all. Perhaps it had had something to do with his surname and all that bullshit that came with it and meant nothing, only Remus had never been able to see that. Remus had always looked at him like he was something special, for fuck’s sake, something untouchable. Well, Remus wasn’t looking at him like that now.
“I have to apologise,” Remus said, and it sounded like he had been practising it a lot. “I’m so fucking –“
“Don’t.”
“Why the hell not? I believed you were –“
“I believed you were,” Sirius said and fixed his eyes onto Remus, “didn’t I? I believed it first.”
“I believed it for twelve years.”
“Don’t do this,” he asked again. “Just give me…”
“What?”
“Sandwich. Give me the sandwich.”
“Fine,” Remus said, placed the cup of tea in his hands and stood up. “I’ll bring it over.”
“No, I’m coming to the… where do you want me? Living room? Is the room with –“
“It’s the living room,” Remus said, watching him with old eyes. He didn’t really want to go to the living room. He wanted to stay here where he could lie down and close his eyes and breathe in the scent of Remus in the sheets. But it had been a long time since he had last been a human, a proper human, and he needed to be that again. For Remus. Otherwise Remus would grow tired of him and kick him out, or worse, Remus would pity him and keep him here and watch him with sorrowful old eyes. He stood up and put on his normal face, only it faltered under Remus’ careful gaze. Then he followed Remus to the living room and sat down in the sofa like a normal person would have.
“You don’t have to, you know,” Remus said from the kitchen, “try so hard.”
“I’m not trying,” he said and tried to smile but it felt stretched on his face. Remus said nothing, only brought him the sandwich and then sat down in the armchair across the room, far away. The sun was apparently going down and it drew long shadows in the room, one of them landing in Remus’ lap. But he wasn’t going to stare at Remus’ lap. He blinked and ate his sandwich. It probably tasted good. His head felt a lot better than earlier but still it was a bit difficult to concentrate on things like how something tasted.
“You want another?”
“No.”
“Should we do something?” Remus said and then cleared his throat. “Like, talk? Or listen to the radio?”
“No,” Sirius said. Of course he wanted to talk. He wanted to hear everything about the fourteen years Remus had lived without him, every little detail, every damn thing Remus had done. He wanted Remus explain so that in the end he could imagine he had been there as well. But he also wanted to know nothing of it.
“Maybe we should go to sleep.”
“Maybe we should.”
“You might want to take a bath first, though,” Remus said.
He waited on the couch while Remus prepared the bath for him. They were running out of light and the wind against the stone walls sounded not unlike the wind in where he had been. Azkaban. He should learn to call it by its name. Everyone else did. He flinched when Remus said that the bath was ready, but the sound of the wind had faded a little, so that was good. He undressed in the bathroom and the clothes clung to his skin as if someone was holding him tightly. He dropped them onto the floor. The air was cold but the water in the bath was warm and there was magic in it, something nice, something Remus had done. He closed his eyes and sunk deeper. He was pretty certain he had loved Remus.
**
Remus tried to make him take the bed. He couldn’t find the words to argue against it, so he just laid on the sofa and stayed there until Remus gave up. He was proud about being the stubborn one until Remus closed the bedroom door and left him alone. His breathing grew heavier inside his head. The room was huge and the strips of dark light were moving slowly on the floor as an unseen drift moved the curtains. For a second he wasn’t sure where he was or if it was a dream after all, and then suddenly there was a soft light coming from the bedroom. Remus was standing in the doorway, only this wasn’t his Remus, this was someone older and wearier who was wearing Remus’ clothes and eyes and mouth.
“I’ll leave the door open,” Remus said, “so I can hear that you’re here.”
After that Sirius felt a bit better. Tomorrow he would ask Remus about the twelve missing years. He would do it in a way that wouldn’t make him sound bitter at all. He rehearsed it in his head a few times and thought about how they’d probably have that conversation over morning tea, or coffee, if Remus still drank coffee. He would have to find out. He would ask about that, too. And maybe at some point he would ask what exactly had happened fourteen years ago.
However, it turned out that in the morning he couldn’t make himself speak up, because Remus was walking across the small house in just a t-shirt and jeans. He hadn’t seen Remus in a t-shirt and jeans in fourteen years, which was unbelievable and unbearable and probably shouldn’t have thrown him out of balance as much as it did. Remus made him coffee and they sat at the kitchen table, drinking it. The coffee tasted a bit like Remus’ magic, and when he said it aloud, Remus stared at him as if trying not to wonder if he had lost his mind. He bit his lip. But the thing was that his magic had gone a bit wild in the past year or possibly years. Maybe it had changed with him. Or maybe when everything else in him had lessened, the magic had seen its chance and taken over.
“What’re you thinking about?”
He blinked. Remus was looking at him with an expression that faltered just slightly. “I don’t know.”
“Really?”
Sometimes when he had been hiding in caves and abandoned buildings, he had thought Remus was there with him, just for a second of course, but apparently a second was enough to knock the breath out of one’s chest. He had lost Remus once. It shouldn’t have hurt like that when it happened again, and only in his mind.
“Magic,” he said because Remus’ eyes were still fixed on him, “I was thinking about magic.”
“You still can,” Remus said in a hollow voice, “can’t you?”
“Yes,” Sirius said, wondering what Remus meant.
“You can still do magic.”
“Of course. It’s just…”
“What?”
“Sometimes I don’t plan for things to happen. They just… do.”
“You were always brilliant.”
What an absurd thing to say. He stared at Remus and Remus drew his gaze away. “I mean my magic is out of control.”
“How bad is it?” Remus said in a wrong voice. He still sounded as if he was trying to bite back a compliment.
“I don’t know.”
“But you haven’t hurt anyone.”
Sirius almost laughed. He should’ve known. James and Lily had fucking died because he hadn’t known, and there had been days when he hadn’t been able to remember their faces, and days when he hadn’t been able to remember that they had existed at all. And he had hurt himself as well, hadn’t he? He had ruined the whole life he and Remus might have had.
Then he realised that wasn’t what Remus had meant.
“No,” he said. His voice was hoarse and bare.
“Good,” Remus said. Fuck that he wanted to kiss Remus. He wanted to stand up, walk around the table and grab Remus’ shoulders, no, he wanted to hold Remus’ face in between his hands so that Remus couldn’t turn away from him. Then he would kiss Remus. Eyes closed he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from the past fourteen years. It would be just like no time had been lost at all.
Remus said his name.
“What?” he said and blinked. They were still sitting, unmoved, both of them. Remus was watching him as if trying to read something in his face. He didn’t want to know what there was to read, so he stood up and walked to the living room.
**
It turned out there wasn’t much to do in Remus’ cottage. They were apparently somewhere in Yorkshire and Remus only went to the nearest village a few times a week to buy food and convince himself that the world still existed, only he didn’t say that last one aloud. When Sirius asked what Remus did for work, Remus said oh, pretty much nothing. In a few days Sirius found out that pretty much nothing meant Remus was doing research on the magic of transforming beings for an American journal that specialised in subjects some others thought weren’t worth anyone’s while. Sirius asked what transforming beings meant and Remus glared at him as if he was an idiot. Oh. It meant Remus.
At first he kept waiting for an owl from Dumbledore, something that would take him away from Remus again. But nothing came. Then he began thinking that maybe, just maybe Dumbledore had forgotten about him and Remus. Maybe they would live here, alone, until the end of time. Later he realised he had forgotten Harry and that he loved Harry, he really thought he did, Harry was James and Lily’s son. How could he have not loved Harry? He shouldn’t dream about disappearing in a small cottage in the countryside with Remus. But Remus was right there and Harry wasn’t and sometimes when he thought of Harry, he could only remember James.
After a few days, he began going outside the cottage every once in a while, especially when he forgot for a second about the lost time and then suddenly there was Remus, much older and sadder than he ought to have been. Remus never seemed to forget they weren’t in 1981 anymore. Remus always remembered that the Sirius who was staying in the cottage was the broken one. He felt oddly resentful about that at times and so he went to the yard, walked circles in the tiny garden, felt the air moving on his skin and in his hair. When he opened his mouth, he could taste the sea or the rain or the grass or the dust, depending on the weather. But he never dared to go far. Remus watched him through the windows which made him angry sometimes, but also he thought maybe he couldn’t get lost now that Remus had his eyes on him. And there were times when he desperately wanted to be the dog and times when he thought he had no control over it, his mind was slipping to the mind of the dog and he couldn’t have stopped it even if he had wanted to. But he stayed in his own skin anyway, because what if he ran away and Remus couldn’t catch him.
It was mad to fear these things. He knew that. He was pretty sure that had he been the dog, he would have climbed into Remus’ lap and stayed there. But he couldn’t help it. He took long baths every time Remus suggested them, sat in the bathtub filled with warm water and Remus’ gentle magic and stared at his own human limbs, his human skin filled with odd scars he didn’t remember, his human fingers that could touch things, touch Remus, if he only dared to. Remus would probably let him. God he wanted to, only he was sure he’d do it wrong somehow and then he’d never have another chance.
A chance. He had had a chance once. He was sitting in the living room, watching Remus who was reading a book about the science of magic or something like that. Remus had glasses now and kept pushing them up his nose with his knuckles as he read. Remus’ hair was still thick but it had grey in it, absurd, they were young, they were… no, they were ancient. He blinked. Yes, he had had a chance even if he’d thought until the last minute that he never would. With Remus. Because maybe, possibly, Remus was gay but there was no reason to think that Remus liked him. Remus never suggested anything. Remus never hinted. And Sirius didn’t either because it would ruin the friendship. Sometimes he went to one of the gay bars Muggles had, and he kissed someone and then fucked them in the side alley or, once, in his bedroom in the flat he and Remus shared. That was a mistake. Remus hated him for it. Didn’t say it aloud, of course, the insufferable git, just kept watching him with those hurt eyes. And he couldn’t bear it. He didn’t know why Remus didn’t want him to sleep with anyone and couldn’t make himself ask. He had kissed Remus in the end anyway. Or Remus had kissed him.
“Sirius?”
They had kissed in the kitchen, Remus’ back pressed against the cupboard door, Remus’ hands squeezing the hem of Sirius’ shirt. He remembered that.
“What’re you thinking about?”
He took a deep breath. Remus was watching him from the armchair. “What’re you thinking about.”
“You were staring at me,” Remus said.
“No,” he said and cleared his throat, “yes. Sorry.”
Remus set the book aside. “You don’t have to say that. I thought we agreed.”
“I meant,” he said and swallowed the rest of it, because he had no idea what he had meant. Remus didn’t seem surprised. Remus would probably remember if they had kissed for real. Remus would know what had happened. But Sirius couldn’t possibly ask. “Did we –“
“What?” Remus said and leaned slightly towards him. He wanted to stand up and walk away but his feet were too heavy.
“Kiss,” he said and bit his lip, fucking hell, this was exactly what they couldn’t talk about. Remus was watching him with an odd look. Remus was angry at him, no, not angry, more like… terrified. But Remus couldn’t be terrified of him. That wasn’t possible.
“You’re asking me,” Remus was saying in a thin voice, “you’re asking me if we kissed. Back then.”
“Yes,” Sirius said. He couldn’t take it back now.
“You don’t remember?”
“Of course I remember,” he said quickly, “I remember. We kissed in the kitchen. You were… you had your hands in my… you were holding my shirt. You were breathing. Hard. Breathing hard. You were…”
“God,” Remus said almost soundlessly, “that’s what you remember.”
Fuck. So maybe it hadn’t happened after all. Maybe he had been wishing it would so badly he had thought it had. And he remembered how Remus had sounded, calling his name against his mouth, and they had been lying on the floor for some reason, Remus on his back and looking at Sirius and -
“That’s all that you remember,” Remus said slowly. “Really?”
“Yes. No. I remember… we were on the floor.”
“On the floor,” Remus said. He looked like Sirius had just hit him on the face.
“You were,” Sirius said and paused. “I was –“
“I don’t know what Dumbledore was thinking,” Remus said and stood up, walked out of the room so quickly Sirius had no time to do anything, and he couldn’t have anyway because he couldn’t move. The door opened and closed and the room became empty. It was almost like before, when he had been alone, hiding, and he had been talking to Remus and then suddenly he had blinked and Remus hadn’t been there anymore -
He stood up and followed Remus out of the house. It was raining. He stopped when the wet air hit his face, but Remus was standing a few steps away from him. He held his breath and walked to Remus.
“I loved you,” Remus said to an old bed of flowers. “I fucking loved you. Don’t you remember that?”
Sirius opened his mouth and then closed it again.
“I told myself that maybe you wouldn’t,” Remus said, “fuck, even Dumbledore tried to tell me. No one comes out of Azkaban. No one comes out of Azkaban whole. But I thought…”
“I remember,” Sirius said. It sounded as if it was coming from far away. “It’s just that I’m not sure.”
Remus’ shoulders twitched. “Sure about what?”
“I don’t know. About what’s real. About what really happened and what… didn’t.”
“Oh,” Remus said, rubbing his face with both hands. He could’ve been crying. Either of them could’ve been. But it was impossible to tell because the rain was falling on their faces.
“So you’re saying it happened.”
“It happened,” Remus said, almost softly, and glanced at him. “I loved you like hell. I… I tried to rip it out. Later. Because it turned out you had never loved me or that you had and had done all those things anyway and I couldn’t decide which was worse. I tried to… it never worked. But it twisted into this thing. I stopped calling it love. It was just something inside me. It was me.”
There were too many words. He watched Remus’ mouth moving.
“We should go back in,” Remus said. Remus had new lines in the corner of his mouth. But it wasn’t bad. They were here, both of them. Sirius had lines, too. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. He would be patient and in the end Remus would let Sirius kiss him on the mouth. “Sirius?”
“Yeah,” he said. Remus was staring at him now. They were both soaking wet.
“Come in,” Remus said, raised his hand and froze. “Can I?”
“Yes,” he said even though he didn’t know what Remus was asking. It hardly mattered anyway.
Remus placed his hand gently on Sirius’ shoulder, pulled him closer and walked him back to the cottage, through the door, to the living room and to the sofa. It was warm in there. Remus’ eyes still looked wet.
**
He wanted to touch Remus so badly. Had it been like that before? He didn’t remember. Maybe that was why they had ended up kissing. Maybe he had tried not to touch Remus for ages and then finally he had snapped and placed his hands under Remus’ shirt, the skin would be so goddamn warm there, so warm, and Remus would gasp -
The light in the room flickered. He straightened his back and tried to focus. It was evening already, it was rapidly growing darker outside and Remus was sitting in his armchair, not watching him. But he was watching Remus. Fuck how he wanted to touch -
“Sirius,” Remus said in a heavy voice, “what the hell?”
He drew a deep breath and the soft light of Remus’ magic filled the room again. “What?”
“It’s mine,” Remus said, “the illumination charm. You don’t even have your wand.”
“I have my –“
“You aren’t holding it.”
Sirius blinked and stared down at his hands. He was squeezing his knees.
“You’re altering my magic,” Remus said in a quiet voice that had both irritation and wonder in it, and it was so familiar it made something ache in a nameless place somewhere deep inside Sirius’ bones, or his mind, if there was a difference. “What’re you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he said. He wasn’t thinking about Remus lying on his back on the floor beside the sofa, his bare knees touching Sirius’ sides, and all that skin, yes, Remus would be naked and he could touch Remus everywhere, his palms flat on Remus’ stomach and chest, his fingers mapping all the scars that were like a fucking tapestry of the years he hadn’t been there. Remus would be panting. And watching him. With wonder and irritation. He’d take a better grip of Remus’ hips, he’d know them, he’d know they were still the same, him and Remus, and then, very slowly, he would push himself into Remus.
All the lights went out.
It took some time for him to calm down. And Remus wasn’t helpful at all, no, Remus came to the sofa and sat down beside him and touched him on the knee in the dark and after that there was absolutely no way he could pull his magic away from Remus'. He tried to concentrate on listening to his heartbeats. In the place where they had put him he had done that sometimes, because if there were heartbeats then he was still alive. He had tried to count time by them, too, and had failed every time.
“Sirius,” Remus said when they were still sitting in the dark but Sirius’ breathing had gone steady again and he wasn’t thinking about Remus naked. He certainly wasn’t. “It’s alright.”
“What is?” he asked. His voice sounded hoarse.
“Everything. Anything.”
Maybe he could lean into Remus and claim it was an accident.
“I think sometimes you move things without meaning to,” Remus said almost without a voice. “I’ve been wondering if… maybe you aren’t sure where you are. Maybe your mind is trying to make sense of that and that’s why you do it.”
“I didn’t mean to –“
“I know. Did you realise you were doing it?”
He tried to remember. “No.”
“Well,” Remus said and took a deep sigh, “I really need tea but I don’t trust myself to make it in the dark. And also I’m kind of afraid to use magic right now.”
“Because of me.”
“Because what if I tried to move the tea pan, and your magic gets in between and moves the whole house to, say, Ireland.”
Sirius tried to determine whether Remus was joking. Maybe he had never been able to tell the difference. It had been as if Remus was always sincere, always concerned, always a bit sad, and still Remus had kept saying things that had to be a joke. He remembered Remus in their bed, tangled in ruined sheets, and Remus kept saying this doesn’t change anything. This doesn’t have to change anything.
“Could you make me tea?”
He blinked. “What?”
“Please.”
“I don’t –“
“Your magic can turn off every illumination charm that I have in this house,” Remus said softly. “I think you can manage to make me tea.”
“I don’t know,” Sirius said and cleared his throat. “I might break something.”
“I don’t care,” Remus said. “Break everything. Fuck that.”
“You never said fuck,” Sirius said. The word sounded odd, said in his voice.
“Yes, I did. Just not when you were… not to your face.”
He swallowed. “Why?”
“I guess I didn’t want you to know that I was… I didn’t want you to see me.”
“But I saw you all the time.”
Remus laughed in a dry voice. “No, you didn’t.”
“Of course I did. We were –“ But he couldn’t say it.
“Sometimes,” Remus said, slowly as if trying to decide whether it was worth it after all, “sometimes even before we were together, and I mean, a lot before, years before, I thought I was in love with you. I wanted you. I wanted…”
What, Sirius thought but couldn’t say it aloud. At some point he had closed his eyes.
“Usually I just wanted you to come to the bathroom when I was taking a shower,” Remus said in a stretched voice, “and lock the door. And then you’d kiss me. But not very gently. More like… like you knew you were this brilliant thing and I was nothing and that everything you did to me, every tiny little thing, was so much more than I had ever thought I’d get. And then you’d push me against the wall and run your fingers down my back.”
There was a flash of light. He opened his eyes.
“So,” Remus said, sounding out of breath, “is that it? Your magic messes with my lights when you think about sex?”
Sirius’ ears were ringing. No, he wasn’t thinking about sex, sex was… sex wasn’t… he was thinking about Remus, Remus in the bathroom in the Gryffindor tower, and how he would walk in and lock the door and kiss Remus as gently as he ever could -
“I need that cup of tea,” Remus said and stood up. “Try to keep your magic in control.”
“I can do it.”
“Really?”
“What do you want? I mean, what kind of tea?”
“Anything,” Remus said. Sirius focused on the smile in his voice and slowly, slowly the room filled with dim light.
He made Remus tea. He broke two cups in the process but Remus fixed them and nothing irregular happened. And then Remus sat there in the armchair, holding the cup of tea Sirius had given him, looking vaguely happy and only slightly concerned, and Sirius kept his eyes on the window that reflected only the room and the two of them. Everything else had vanished. In the reflection everything was made of dull colours and indistinct shapes and they could’ve easily been twenty-one.
**
“I know that sofa is crap,” Remus said, standing in the bathroom doorway and holding a toothbrush. “I’ve slept a couple of nights on it.”
“Why?” Sirius asked. It was probably the wrong question but Remus didn’t seem surprised.
“I brought a guy over.”
Fuck. He didn’t want to hear anymore. “You brought –“
“I tried to meet people, you know,” Remus said and disappeared to the bathroom for a second, apparently to spit to the sink. “Not often. But sometimes. I was lonely.”
“You were –“
“And I hated you. Because if you hadn’t done that to me, if you hadn’t taken me and then left me, I might’ve been happy with someone else. But now I couldn’t. And I tried.”
“I didn’t leave –“
“I know,” Remus said. He was only wearing a t-shirt and pants. Some of the new scars on his legs looked like they hadn’t healed at all. Sirius wanted so badly to touch them. With his fingertips, no, with his mouth. He would be so careful it wouldn’t even hurt. “I know it now. But back then, I wanted you… I wanted you not to have existed at all. And I wanted you back. I wanted you back so badly I had dreams about it years after you’d been put away. And every time I fucked someone –“
He flinched. Remus seemed happy.
“I always imagined it was you,” Remus said. “How pathetic is that. And it had been years. So, a couple of times I hooked up with someone and brought them here but couldn’t stand sleeping next to them so I sneaked to the living room and slept on the sofa. You should come to my bed.”
Sirius sat down in the armchair, Remus’ armchair, and lost a few seconds thinking about how Remus’ body had been sitting right where he was only a few minutes ago.
“Sirius,” Remus said, his voice lower now, “you could sleep in my bed. It’s big enough.”
“I might,” Sirius said and swallowed hard. “My magic –“
“What? You might push me off the bed with your uncontrollable magic?” Remus looked like he had forgotten about the toothbrush he was still holding in his hand. “I don’t mind.”
I want to, Sirius thought, I want to touch you. Every single inch of you. And to…
To keep you in place.
Gently, though.
He would push Remus against the mattress so that neither of them could disappear.
“But brush your teeth first,” Remus said, backed to the bathroom and closed the door. It seemed a bit unfair because Sirius was fairly sure he had brushed his teeth almost every day since he had been in Remus’ house. He didn’t know how many days he’d been there, though. Maybe a week. Maybe a month. He didn’t remember how to count days.
Later, when he sat down on the edge of the bed, his heartbeat was too fast inside his head. On the opposite side of the mattress, Remus was laying absolutely still. Maybe Remus was afraid of him. Or he was afraid of Remus. It could’ve been either way. He took a deep breath and lay down, and then in a few seconds his heartbeat gave way to the silence in the room. Remus was breathing in a steady rhythm. He wondered what he should say to Remus. He would probably get the words out wrong anyway. And he couldn’t ask if he could touch Remus, not now when Remus had just let him in his bed. Maybe later. But thinking about later made breath get stuck in his throat because time was an odd thing and what if there was no later. Before had been over so quickly once. It could happen again. And this time it would be as if they hadn’t even tried.
He woke up to the streaks of sunlight on his face. Remus was gone and the mattress beside him was cold. He felt every door in the house locking up in an instant and then there was Remus, standing in the doorway, watching him with a patient smile that clearly said really?
**
One night, he woke up when it was still dark and he couldn’t fall asleep again. Remus’ scent was everywhere. Remus’ magic tingled on his skin. He wanted so badly to run his fingers on Remus’ bare shoulders that his chest began to hurt, and then he realised he had stopped breathing. He stood up, went to the living room and lay down on the sofa. When he woke up, the room was filled with grey light of early morning and Remus was standing beside the sofa, arms crossed on his chest.
“Come back to bed,” Remus said.
He wanted to tell Remus why he couldn’t. It would’ve been fair. But when he opened his mouth, Remus told him to shut up in a voice that sounded hoarse and bare and emotional and he just followed Remus to the bedroom. When they were back in the bed, Remus placed his hand just for a second on Sirius’ shoulder before pulling it away, and he lay down wide awake and heart drumming and watched the light grow bolder in the room and thought about that touch. It could’ve been an accident.
“I want to cut your hair,” Remus said later, when they had already eaten breakfast. “And your beard.”
“You want to –“
“I know we aren’t going anywhere,” Remus said, “but you look like you’ve been hiding in caves for a year. If we went to the pub in the village, they’d kick us out.”
“The pub –“
“Would you let me do it? Without magic. If I try to touch you with magic, you’re going to mess with it somehow.”
Touch you with magic.
Touch you -
“Yes.”
“Good,” Remus said and stood up. “Take a chair to the bathroom. I’ll be right there.”
Sirius took a chair to the bathroom and Remus placed it so that he could see the both of their faces in the mirror. His hands were shaking. Remus had a razor, which was absurd, he had never seen Remus with a razor, but Remus’ hands were calm and steady as one of them held the knife and one settled against Sirius’ throat, fingers circling it, moving slightly when Remus searched for a place to start. He closed his eyes and thought Remus was going to kill him. Remus would slit his throat open and watch him bleed to death and then whatever it was between them would finally be finished.
“Sirius.”
He opened his eyes. Remus was holding his jaw very gently, moving the knife lightly enough that he barely felt it. It itched.
“Trust me,” Remus said.
Trust me, trust me, trust me, it echoed inside his mind.
They were twenty-one and he loved Remus but he couldn’t be sure. And sometimes Remus was looking at him as if wondering when everything would go to hell.
Trust me, Remus had once said when he had asked for the tenth time what Dumbledore made Remus do for the Order and why Remus couldn’t tell him about it.
“I loved you,” he said aloud and felt the blade against his throat twitch.“I did, didn’t I?”
“And you ask that now,” Remus said in a somehow distant voice and placed his left hand against the side of Sirius’ face. “Can you look to the right?”
He tried to. “Sometimes you were the only thing that made sense. And I thought I’d go mad if I lost you.”
“You thought I might die,” Remus said, running both his fingers and his knife down the line of Sirius’ jaw.
“Yes,” he lied and glanced at the reflection in the mirror. He had shaving cream in his shirt. His eyes had an odd flicker in them. It could’ve been because of the light. “And I lost you. It happened.”
“You aren’t mad,” Remus said in a steady voice, “or else we both are.”
“Did I love you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know it?”
Remus’ knife stopped in the place where Sirius’ heartbeat was stuck in his throat. “No.”
“You didn’t know I loved you.”
“No,” Remus said in a thin voice. “But it wasn’t exactly your fault. Maybe it wasn’t mine either. You told me. I just didn’t believe you.”
“I told you –“
“You told me you loved me,” Remus said as he took a pair of scissors from the corner of the sink and ran his fingers through Sirius’ hair before making the first cut. “Many times. I kept telling myself why it couldn’t be true.”
“Why?”
“You were too good. Too handsome. Too good at fucking. Too upper-class. You could’ve had someone else. I was…”
He thought about Remus’ fingers clinging to his shoulders, squeezing so hard it almost hurt, Remus’ breath smelling of whiskey and coffee. Now Remus’ hands were steady and the room smelled of shaving cream and nothing else.
“You said it too many times,” Remus said in a low voice, caressing what was left of Sirius’ hair. “It sounded like you were trying to convince me.”
“You always looked at me as if,” Sirius said and found that his voice was hoarse, “as if you thought I’d leave.”
“We were so fucking stupid,” Remus said. “Do you want your hair shorter than this?”
“I don’t know.” Sirius’ reflection in the mirror looked old and frightened. “Can you cut it so that I look like I used to?”
“No,” Remus said.
**
He woke up in the morning. It was cold in the room. Remus’ duvet was pushed aside and the bedsheet was wrinkled where Remus had lain beside him. He pressed his hand against the sheet but it wasn’t warm anymore.
Outside it was raining. He took a few steps and then just stood there, watching the rain fall on the ground that went on and on and on. His mind was quiet. He should probably write to Harry. Harry was waiting for a letter from him. He was pretty sure he could keep in mind that Harry was Harry and James was dead long enough that he could finish writing a letter. And he would let Remus read the letter before sending it, just in case.
He went back to the house and sat in the living room for a moment, but Remus was still in the shower and there was the sound of water falling onto the porcelain of the bathtub, and then that other sound as well. He closed his eyes but his magic was already reaching out to Remus'. Remus sounded a lot like he had in early 80’s: short breaths that broke as if Remus was trying to swallow them down, the rhythm of them growing faster, and then, little by little, winces just loud enough to be heard if you were waiting for them, scattered in between the breaths. He walked a circle in the living room before giving up and sitting down on the other side of the bathroom door. When he pressed his ear against the door, he heard Remus better. Remus was already close, and in a hurry. Maybe Remus was thinking about him. Hadn’t Remus said he always thought about Sirius? But that was Sirius as he had been when they were young, of course, not the version of him that was left. Surely Remus was thinking about the memory of him.
When Remus opened the bathroom door, Sirius was still sitting on the floor beside it. Remus’ face was flushed but he only glanced at Sirius and then went to make coffee.
**
He hadn’t known he’d been planning it until he had already asked. But Remus didn’t look surprised. The rain had finally stopped and they were sitting in the garden chairs that looked like they had been in place long enough to grow roots.
“I think I have a bottle of whiskey somewhere here,” Remus said instead of answering, then stood up and went inside. After a while he returned. The bottle of whiskey turned out to be half empty. Remus had also brought two glasses, one of which he gave to Sirius and then poured just enough whiskey to cover the bottom. “I suppose you haven’t had alcohol in fourteen years.”
Sirius shook his head.
“This is mostly for me, anyway,” Remus said, as he placed the bottle in the grass beside the chairs and sat down. “Because you asked.”
“I don’t remember –“
“I know,” Remus said and glanced at him. “But this is like… like you are asking me to rewrite it for you.”
“Rewrite what?”
“Us,” Remus said, and there was something bitter in this voice. “Our story. And I want to. Fuck that I want to. But I can’t fix it.”
“I’m not asking you to –“
“I know,” Remus said and took a long sip of his whiskey. There were new scars on Remus’ neck as well, angry red lines drawn over his throat. “But also, for years I thought I had been this huge fool. I had always known you’d break my heart in the end but the way you did it was so incredibly cruel that you still took me by surprise. And so I kept telling myself this story about you and me and how everything was doomed from the beginning but I just couldn’t see it because I was so madly in love with you. And now you’re here again, actually here. And you want to hear the story about…”
Sirius held his breath as Remus paused to drink more whiskey.
“The story about how we were in love,” Remus said. “We actually were in love.”
“Yeah.”
“But surely you remember the night when we kissed,” Remus said, glancing at him, “and shagged. For the first time. You don’t need me to tell you about that.”
“I remember,” he said and cleared his throat, “us kissing in the kitchen. And… and you were on your back.”
“God,” Remus said and closed his eyes.
“On the floor. Your skin was damp with… but I don’t remember how we got there.”
“Too bad,” Remus said in a soft voice. “It was… I think it was September 1979. It was a few weeks after you brought Fabian Prewett to our place and fucked him so that I could hear.”
Sirius swallowed. “What?”
“You left the door ajar. Just slightly. But it couldn’t have been by accident.”
“I didn’t…” he said and tried to remember sleeping with Fabian Prewett. He remembered Fabian smiling and he remembered the man whose back he’d kept kissing in his bed that admittedly creaked quite loudly. But he couldn’t connect Fabian with the man. “Was it Fabian?”
“Yes,” Remus said, staring into the distance. “I was so angry at you. I was so sure you knew I liked you. I still think you did. I was so… I wanted you so badly. And I was crap at hiding it. I was sure you could see it in my eyes. And I figured that if you liked me back, you would’ve done something about it. But you just kept going to those Muggle places to find men, and then you came back home and told me about how you had fucked someone in the loo or… and then Fabian. And in the morning you were just so, I don’t know, you were smiling and we drank coffee, the three of us, and then he went and you told me about it, you fucking bastard, you told me about how you had –“
He only realised he was staring at Remus with his mouth half open when Remus flinched and took a quick breath.
“I decided to get over you,” Remus said in a thin voice. “But of course I couldn’t. I couldn’t even kiss anyone else. I didn’t know how to fucking find anyone or how to tell them that I was… and then one night you had been drinking with James and then probably on your own for some time, and I had been thinking about how you’d kiss someone and what else you’d do with them, and I had been drinking, too. You had that place where you kept your whiskey, in the upper shelf in the cupboard, remember?” He didn’t. “I had emptied it. And I was sitting in the living room, already drunk, and you came through the door and I was so impossibly happy that you hadn’t brought anyone home with you, and so sorry for myself for loving you so pathetically, and then I said that I wanted you to kiss me.”
“You said that?” he asked, when Remus had been silent for a bit too long.
“Yes,” Remus said. “One night stand. That’s what I thought it’d be. You’d be drunk enough to fuck me instead of someone interesting. You didn’t believe me at first, of course. I had to say it at least four times. I had to follow you to the kitchen. And I had to reason it out for you. I was gay, I didn’t have the guts to tell anyone, I didn’t have the guts to try to find anyone, so I wanted you to have me. And that was kind of true, only I was also in love with you. But I didn’t tell you that.”
“You should’ve,” Sirius said. Something hurt so badly he had to remind himself to keep breathing.
“You tried to take it to the bed but I couldn’t let you,” Remus said, “I thought I’d break if you were too nice to me. So we did it on the floor.”
He remembered that. He remembered Remus watching him as if he was the most brilliant thing in the whole world.
“But in the morning you made me coffee,” Remus said in almost soft voice. “You never made me coffee. I thought you were trying to be nice. But then you began kissing me and touching me. Once you kissed me on the cheek when we were playing a board game with Lily and James and they just stared, and I stared, and you looked like you were daring them to say something about it. And then I went to your bed and you were as gentle as I’d let you be and I thought that maybe we could both fuck and be friends. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything. Maybe you were lonely, too, and wanted someone who was always at hand, and it was logical, you liked me as a friend and didn’t think I was terrible in bed and that was why you –“
“I loved you.”
Remus breathed in.
“I love you,” Sirius said in a voice that didn’t sound exactly his.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Remus said. “I can’t believe we have another chance.”
**
“Remus,” he said when they were in the bed. The name felt soft in his mouth. Remus turned to look at him through the dark and the shadows on Remus’ face could’ve easily hidden fourteen years. “I want to touch you.”
“You want what?” Remus asked, blinking. Sirius wasn’t sure how long they had been in bed or if they had slept already or not.
“I want to touch you. You have new scars. Your skin is new.”
“It’s not new,” Remus said in a breathless laugh.
“I want to touch you.”
“Like…” Remus cleared his throat. “Like, sex?”
He thought about Remus underneath him, heels pressing against the small of his back. “Yes. No.”
“No?”
”I’m not… I haven’t… since Azkaban. I don’t think I’m able. But you could fuck me. Or anything. Anything you like. It’s just that I can’t…”
Remus watched him for a long time. “It could come back, you know. It probably will.”
“You can have me.”
“Not today. We have time.”
He shifted on the mattress. There were probably five or six hours until the sunrise. Then they would wake up and drink coffee and maybe that would be the day when Dumbledore came for them.
He raised his hand and ran his fingers through Remus’ hair.
“I’m going grey,” Remus said.
“I know.”
“You don’t mind.”
He pressed his fingertips into Remus’ scalp. Remus blinked and called his name, and he was certain he wouldn’t know how to do it anymore, how to do anything anymore. He had forgotten it. He had almost forgotten Remus and everything they had been, including the kiss in the kitchen. And wasn’t it cruel that when you forgot something, you didn’t even know what it was anymore, and then, finally, maybe you didn’t even know you had forgotten anything at all. It was lost. All of it. All the days he didn’t remember but Remus did, and Remus had loved him and he couldn’t even remember that.
Remus kept calling his name. His fingers had stopped moving and Remus was holding his wrist. Of course he remembered Remus had loved him. He didn’t remember the details but he remembered that, only it felt vague compared to the day when they had taken him to the boat, over the sea, and the charms they had put on him had been so strong that he hadn’t known exactly what was happening but he had known he was alone. He had loved Remus and lost Remus and, what was worse, Remus had loved him and he had lost that too.
“Sirius,” Remus said through the sound of the sea surrounding Azkaban and the boat in which he sat and thought about what he had lost, “Sirius, look at me, talk to me –“
He blinked. Remus was squeezing his wrist tight enough to bruise it.
“It’s almost like you don’t know where you are,” Remus said in a rushed voice. “Try to –“
He placed his free hand on the side of Remus’ face. Remus gasped and he thought of another Remus, in another time, lying on the floor, only the memory had changed and now Remus’ eyes were sad because Sirius couldn’t possibly love him, couldn’t even fancy him, not the way Sirius fancied Fabian, the brilliant Fabian who knew how to tell jokes and when to laugh.
He leaned forward and placed his mouth against Remus'. His heart was beating. His ears were ringing. The room was full of light that wasn’t supposed to be there and the magic moved in him like a wave, broke down as the water falling against the shore.
“The lights,” Remus said against his mouth, “you’re breaking my charms again.”
He didn’t remember how to kiss. He swallowed and tried to open his mouth but it was as if he was trying to talk without knowing any words.
“Look at me,” Remus said, pulling Sirius’ wrist to the back of his neck so that his fingers touched Remus’ warm skin. “Sirius, look at me.”
Remus looked so much older.
“Keep looking at me,” Remus said, then let go of his wrist and slowly, slowly took his face in between his palms and kissed him.
**
“Remus?”
“What?” Remus said, looking at him over a cup of coffee. Remus’ eyes were still heavy with sleep and he was wearing his t-shirt inside out. Outside, the morning fog had pressed against the windows and it all looked grey.
“What was it like?” Sirius asked, walking to the bed and sitting on the edge so that Remus’ bare feet couldn’t reach him.
Remus tilted his head to the side. He was leaning his back against the wall and his duvet was halfway falling from over his legs to the floor. “What was?”
“Kissing me.”
Remus looked mildly surprised. “Just now?”
“Before. What it was like before.”
“I don’t know,” Remus said, grabbing the duvet and pulling it back on. This morning, he had woken up in Remus’ bed, Remus’ fingers slowly following his spine. It had taken him a few seconds to remember. And then it had all come back, well, not all but what was left of it: having Remus, losing Remus, years in the void, a black sea breaking against stone walls until the end of time, and then, coming back, hiding alone with the mess of his memories, coming to Remus again, kissing Remus in bed last night. Remus had done most of the kissing, though. “It’s not like I remember it right, either,” Remus was saying now. “I don’t think we remember anything right. Everything changes with time. And some things stick with you but you can’t tell anymore if they were real or not.”
“But,” Sirius said, “what do you think?”
“You liked kissing,” Remus said and tugged the hem of his t-shirt. “I wasn’t exactly sure why. You kept kissing me at odd times. And on odd spots. Like my left elbow.”
God. He had forgotten about Remus’ elbow. “There was a… a scar.”
“I’ve got plenty of those,” Remus said, but his voice was stretched now.
“You got it after I hooked up with… I don’t remember his name. I wanted you to come to have a beer with us. And the next full moon, you were out of control. You were… I don’t know.”
“I was jealous,” Remus said in a voice that was barely audible.
“In the morning, I tried to fix that wound for you. But you were lying there and your eyes were stuck on me and I couldn’t think, and it just got worse. You were watching me as if you were trying to see what was inside. And James and… and Peter were still there but you didn’t even seem to remember.”
“I’m sure I didn’t.”
“You still have it?”
Remus raised his left arm from where it had been laying in his lap. The scar had faded or maybe it was that the light was dim. He stared at Remus’ arm for a moment, leaned forward and tried to get to Remus over the duvet. Remus took hurried sips of his coffee and then sent the mug across the room, where it landed quite unsteadily on the dresser. “Sirius. You don’t need to –“
He closed his eyes and kissed the scar on Remus’ elbow.
“Fuck,” Remus said under his breath, “think about the two of us, think about if we tried to be together now, after we messed up and lost fourteen fucking years, and now we’re at war again. We’d be mad to think that we’d do better this time.”
He thought about kissing Remus on the mouth, but Remus was watching him like he was trying to see what was inside again and he didn’t want Remus to know. So he pushed Remus’ shirt up and lay his hands on Remus’ chest, traced his fingers along Remus’ ribs, and placed a line of kisses on a particularly long scar Remus had right next to his left nipple. Remus had freckles on his collarbones which was absurd because he couldn’t imagine Remus ever going outside the house without his shirt on. He thought about Remus lying in the sun and the thought pulled something inside of him, until there was an odd sound and he realised he was laughing. Kind of.
“We’d be mad,” Remus was saying, his fingers drawing lazy circles on Sirius’ neck, “it’d be mad.”
Remus only stopped him when he tried to tug Remus’ pants to his knees. He glanced at Remus’ eyes and froze. He knew Remus was hard, he could see the outline and the wet patch in the fabric, and he knew, he remembered he had liked to have Remus in his mouth before. Maybe he would still like it. But Remus’ eyes were muddy as if he was thinking about something else altogether.
“If I lose you again,” Remus said and bit his lip. “It’ll kill me.”
You aren’t going to lose me, Sirius thought.
We’re going to live. We’re going to live through this day and this summer and this war. We’re going to live long enough that we get to finally figure this out. We’re going to kiss and fight and fuck and grow tired of each other and stick with each other anyway because we don’t have anything else. We’re probably going to die in the bed, sleeping, tangled together, in a place like this where fog covers the windows and the floor is cold and there’s nothing but silence and the hum of our magic. We’re going to -
“I’m going to make you breakfast,” Remus said and climbed out of the bed.
**
On some days, he would’ve given anything to remember everything, and on some days he would’ve given anything to forget what he remembered. But sometimes, for a moment, he was happy with what he had. For example: Remus’ face frozen in a muffled cry, the scar on Remus’ lower lip red again because he had been biting it, the persistent stare, fluttering eyelids, heavy breathing, fingers wrapped around Sirius’ wrists, and then, when Sirius finally slid in, Remus’ fingers letting go as Remus closed his eyes. They were in the bedroom and he couldn’t see colours anywhere but in Remus. The rain fell against the windows, and he grabbed Remus’ hips tighter and thought thank God he remembered this, Remus biting his lower lip until it leaked a narrow line of blood on his jaw. He didn’t seem to notice. And Sirius pressed the flat of his palm against Remus’ stomach and then lower, took Remus in his hand and listened to the rhythm of Remus’ breathing break. Yes. This was how it had been before any of it had happened, any of whatever the fuck it was that had broken them apart. Now they were still young, he and Remus, and he loved Remus, he really did. He wanted to make Remus come right now and not in ages, and he wanted to hear every little sound Remus would make, and later they would lie limp and spent in the bed damp with their sweat and the red wine they were going to spill there, surely they had a bottle in the flat, this had to be summer 1980…
“Sirius,” Remus was saying in a surprisingly demanding voice considering his position. Sirius was going to make a comment about it, but then he realised it wasn’t Remus who was lying on his back in the bed. It was him. And the colours had come back. There was fog outside the window and there shouldn’t have been, not in London in 1980, and Remus was watching him, concerned and old and so familiar it stung somewhere near to his heart. Also, Remus was starting to slowly pull away from him.
“No,” he said and grabbed Remus’ arm, “don’t.”
“This isn’t doing anything for you,” Remus said, staring at his eyes as if trying to glue Sirius’ gaze there.
“Sure it is.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I told you I can’t get hard,” he said and took a deep breath. Remus had stopped moving, staying barely inside him.
“Yeah,” Remus said slowly, “but I thought I could…”
Sirius almost laughed.
“Stop that,” Remus said, freezing for a second and then pushing back into him, and again. “Why’re you laughing?”
“Come on,” he said and placed both hands on Remus’ neck. “Fix me? Don’t you think that if that was - - that was possible, we’d have - - done it a long time ago?”
“I can’t just fuck you,” Remus said in a breathless voice. “You can’t fucking come.”
“I know,” he said and then bit his lip to stop the gasp. There was a hastening rhythm of their damp skin slapping against each other and Remus’ breathing growing sharper, and underneath all that, the soft hum that had to be their magic, tangled together as it was supposed to be. He could feel his magic covering Remus’ all around. “I know.”
“Why - - don’t you - - care?”
“Remus,” he said and closed his eyes. It was as if his magic was everywhere, in every place under his skin, and Remus was there too, closer than ever, almost close enough -
Remus came and kissed him clumsily on the neck before pulling away. He tried to linger in the feeling of Remus’ magic inside of him but it was already fading with Remus’ breaths.
“I’m sorry,” Remus said and reached for the wand on the bedside table, “I’m sorry, let me clean –“
He pushed his fingers into Remus’ hair and kissed Remus on the mouth.
“Next time,” Remus said, “I’m going to find a way to make you –“
“No, you aren’t,” he said, “I think. I don’t care.”
“Why?” Remus asked, barely audible.
“Shut up,” he said and pulled his fingers away from Remus’ hair, grabbed Remus’ wrist with one hand and pressed his thumb against the warm skin until he found a pulse. They were alive, the both of them.
“Sirius –“
“Shut up.”
”You were… you are –”
He realised he was smiling. “You liked fucking me.”
“Of course I… we used to do it the other way around.”
“We’re different now.”
“You don’t say.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. The wind was beginning to blow outside and the fog was clearing. It was probably evening already. He couldn’t remember. Perhaps they’d lie here until it got dark and through the night and then there would be another day. Remus was staring at him with lazy unfocused eyes but the concern was there, and he wanted to push his fingers back into Remus’ hair but didn’t dare to let go of Remus’ wrist. “It makes it easier to remember where we are.”
“Where we are –“
“It’s not 1981,” he said. “Because we’re older. And I’m different.”
“You aren’t that different,” Remus said quietly and then lay silent for a long while. Remus’ magic felt content and at ease, yet somehow sad at the same time. “I still love you,” Remus said finally, but the colours were fading and Sirius wasn’t sure if this was his Remus or the Remus who was lying in their bed in London in 1980, his lower lip bleeding. He didn’t dare to ask.
**
Remus’ cottage was close enough to sea that it took only two hours to walk to the shore, or so Remus told him when he asked how long they’d been walking. The wind was cold even if it was only August, as Remus told him when he asked. August. He remembered August in the city, where they had opened the windows and sat on the sofa with their feet on the coffee table, talking about nothing because there was nothing to talk about except the war. It had to be 1981. But he still loved Remus. He could feel it in everywhere under his skin. He couldn’t talk to Remus anymore but sometimes when Remus touched him, it ached in a way that almost choked him.
The wind blew the taste of the salt water in their faces. The sea was grey and the sky was grey and Remus who was standing next to him was also going to be grey. He blinked a couple of times but couldn’t stop looking at Remus, and Remus glanced at him, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets as if trying to hide them there. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Fine,” Remus said and turned to look at the sea. The wrinkles at the edges of Remus’ mouth twitched but everything else in Remus looked concerned. “You’re still staring.”
“I know.”
Remus ran a few fingers through his hair, pushing them away from his face. “Sirius –“
“What?”
“I think it’s going to get bad. Again.”
Of course he knew what Remus was talking about. He remembered that voice and he remembered the quiet fear in Remus’ eyes. “What is?”
“The war,” Remus said quietly enough that the wind almost stole it before Sirius could hear. “And I can’t help thinking, what if he… what if Voldemort is stronger now. What if he learnt from the last time.”
“We are… you are stronger too.”
Remus glanced at him and laughed. He tried not to hear because the laugh was hollow. Before, he’d have tried to kiss that kind of a laugh out of Remus. But maybe that was why they’d messed everything up. Maybe he should’ve let Remus be frightened and not try to fix it with kissing and fucking. But of course it was pointless to wonder why what had happened had happened.
“Last time,” Remus said, “I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know how bad it’d be. Now I know.”
“Remus.”
Remus rubbed his face with both of his hands. “What?”
“We have to make it through,” Sirius said. The wind was rising and the grey waves were growing higher. “We have to live.”
“I know,” Remus said, “I know, but –“
“Because I want to live with you,” Sirius said. “I want to have a life with you.”
For a moment he thought Remus would laugh at him, that hollow laugh, and wouldn’t that be terrible. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t talked about their life together before everything. Perhaps that was why he had somehow given up without a fight, as it seemed now, and let the others tell him he couldn’t trust Remus. But Remus didn’t laugh, instead he took a few deep breaths and turned to face Sirius. “Sirius –“
“We were supposed to,” Sirius said in a dry voice. “I thought we would. Last time. I thought we’d move away from London in the end, because you always missed the country, you missed the hills and the… the space. I thought we’d buy a small cottage somewhere and live there, alone, together, and no one would mind because it would be no one’s business.”
“You’d have gone nuts,” Remus said quietly. “In a place like that. You loved London.”
“I’m a wizard. I can Apparate.”
Remus laughed, and this time there was something warm in his laugh. “You can.”
“Yeah.”
“And you think you’d have Apparated back? Back to me?”
“Yes,” Sirius said and cleared his throat. “Yes, every time. I’d have come back to you every time.”
“Fuck,” Remus said, biting his lower lip. It seemed possible that Remus was going to cry, so it wouldn’t hurt to say a bit more.
“And it’s going to happen,” Sirius said, “it’s going to happen this time. The last war took it from us. We took it from us. But I won’t let it happen again. I’m going to have that life with you. It’s not too late.”
It began raining before he could tell whether Remus was crying. His own face was wet and it tasted a bit like salt but then again, maybe it was the sea. They walked back to the cottage, not talking, but the world was full of sounds and colours even if the most of them were different shades of grey and orange and brown, and a bit green, too, though it was clear that the autumn was coming.