Chapter Text
This time, when Remus wakes up alone again, he can't find Sirius anywhere.
He even checks the closets and the roof this time, and, feeling a bit silly, under the bed. When Sirius doesn't show back up within an hour, Remus does an anxious lap of the block. He pops into the bookshop, where Lucy is lounging in a big fluffy armchair catching up with her homework after working the morning coffee rush.
"Lucy, hi," he says, his head swiveling around the shop.
"Morning, Remus," Lucy says cheerily, closing the textbook in her lap quickly as though she would get in trouble for sitting around, even though she knows Remus doesn't care what she does as long as the customers and cat have been taken care of.
"Lucy, any chance you've seen a man, uh, this tall—" he holds his hand up to about the bridge of his nose "—long curly black hair, light eyes, good looking, lots of tattoos, probably wearing a leather jacket?"
"Noooo," Lucy says thoughtfully, her eyebrows shooting up into her mousey-brown fringe. She watches Remus disappear behind the stacks to the back of the shop, peeking between bookshelves. "Lose your boyfriend, Remus?"
Remus pops back out to the café area of the bookshop, looking scandalized, "What! No! We're not— He's not my boyfriend, he's just— we're just friends, I just can't find him. My flat mate."
"I didn't know you lived with anyone, Remus! And someone that is extremely good looking with lots of tattoos, no less," Lucy sounds absolutely delighted. She completely forgets about her text book and deposits it on the small table beside the arm chair.
Remus ignores the latter jibe, "He's been away for a while. Just got back."
"So he's single then?"
"Lucy, you are sixteen, do your homework," Remus says, walking for the door. "Look, you'll know him if you see him— just, tell him to come find me if he comes in here please."
"On it, boss," Lucy says, and salutes him on his way to the door.
"And don't be weird!"
"I'm never weird! I'm the normalest person you know!"
"Alright," Remus says, and leaves the shop again, ignoring Lucy's cackles.
He shuts himself back up in his flat and spends about the next three hours attempting to also be the normalest person he knows. He stares at a book for a few minutes. He waters all of his plants that need watering, and prunes all the plants that need pruning. By the end of it, he has four new plants made of plant clippings stuffed onto the window sill growing roots in repurposed cans from his recycling. He cleans the kitchen, reorganizes the refrigerator, and even deep cleans the bathroom, which is his least favorite possible chore. He folds the laundry, which is maybe even worse than cleaning the bathroom.
Just when he begins considering re-alphabetizing his bookshelf, he hears keys jingling in the doorway, and he yanks the door open before Sirius can fully unlock the deadbolt. Sirius jumps slightly at the sudden appearance of Remus before him, but gathers himself, pulls the key back out of the lock, and squeezes past him as he yanks his jacket off. "Why does it smell like we're inside of a bottle of bleach in here," He grumbles.
"Where the hell have you been?" Remus asks, shutting the door and locking both locks behind him. He even puts the chain on.
Sirius gives him a dark look over his shoulder. He face is a storm cloud when he slouches into the couch and props a foot up on the coffee table with a deep sigh. "I went out."
Remus throws his hands up and lets them fall back against his thighs. "Yeah, I got that."
Sirius watches him for a moment, frowning. "I went to see Harry. Couldn't stop thinking about him. Could barely sleep all night."
"Sirius!" Remus is surprised that he wasn't woken up. Usually when Sirius can't sleep, he tosses and turns — at least he did back when they shared a dorm room in school. This time, Remus slept completely through the night and didn't even notice him slip out of his arms. Maybe the tossing and turning is less noticeable in dog form. "Don't you think it will make things more difficult if Dumbledore sees us snooping around the Dursleys?"
"No! Remus, they're treating that kid like sh*t! They're lucky I didn't take him away from them there and then!" Sirius says, stiffening in his seat. "I think I might go back, actually."
"You—" Remus sighs, "And you couldn't leave a f*cking note?!"
"Didn't realize I needed to ask permission to leave the prison cell," Sirius snaps.
"That's not what I said."
Sirius rolls his eyes and sinks back down into the couch again, arms folded over his chest. He crosses his other foot over the one that's already on the coffee table.
"Look— whatever, tell me what you saw." Remus scrubs his hand over his face, irritated. "Tell me that they didn't notice you, please."
"Of course not, I went as Padfoot and hid in the bushes, because I can't even visit my own godson in peace." Sirius scoffs. "They had that seven year old kid doing yard work while they ate breakfast in the garden! James's son! God, he looks just like him by the way, I could hardly stand it." He sits up and leans forward, elbows on his knees, his eyes burning bright, "Remus, his clothes hardly even fit him, he looked like he was wearing their little hellspawn's hand-me-downs. And then they sat there, in between stuffing their faces, all of them pointing out spots Harry missed when he was raking the grass, saying he was doing it wrong…Petunia's awful husband told him not to forget to clean the bathrooms when he was done or he wouldn't get dinner! The boy looked miserable!"
"Merlin," Remus mumbles, and sits on the arm rest of the couch opposite from Sirius.
"We can't leave him there, Moony, they're treating him like a live-in maid, and he's hardly seven years old!"
Remus nods thoughtfully. "Okay, yeah. Yes, you're right," he says. "I don't think we should leave him there any longer than we have to. But Dumbledore won't let us have him without any external pressure. I think we need to get the Ministry involved."
"The Ministry? What the hell will those idiots do? They're the ones that locked me up because it was better for their public image than doing the right thing would have been!"
"Maybe, but you know as well as I do that Dumbledore is not on our side here. What else can we do, kidnap him?"
"Better than let him spend another moment there!"
"And twenty minutes later we'd have fifty aurors at our door blowing holes through us."
Sirius is up and pacing now, gesticulating angrily with his hands as he talks. "Then we'll run! I'll withdraw all my money, we'll take him and we'll just f*cking…go!"
"Go where?"
"I don't care! Lithuania! Japan! Costa Rica! Anywhere! We're smart, we can learn a new language."
"Pads," Remus says, placatingly, and walks over to him, putting his hands on his shoulders to get him to stop pacing. "I'm with you, alright? I agree, we need to get him out of there. But let's try something less drastic before we resort to kidnapping and going on the lam."
Sirius rolls his eyes and groans. "Fine! Fine. What's your big idea, Moony?"
"Why don't we start with speaking to the children's welfare office at the Ministry and go from there?"
Remus can tell that Sirius is trying to think of a reason why that's an awful idea, but in the end it seems he comes up with nothing, and he concedes.
A few hours later, and Remus has taken himself off the bookshop schedule for the next two weeks, called in favors from every one of his coworkers for coverage (when he pops in the shop to do so, Lucy jabs him in the side with her elbow and asks "So, did you ever find your sexy flat mate?"), and they soon find themselves in the office of a slightly frazzled looking witch. The top of her frizzy head and glasses are peeking out at them over several large stacks of paperwork on her desk.
"Gentlemen, how may I— Ugh," She says, thinks better of it and stands up to heave two of the stacks out of the way and onto a table behind her which is also already quite covered in paperwork. She sits down again and smooths out her top. "That's better. How may I help you, gentlemen?"
"Right," Says Sirius, and Remus is surprised to find he sounds a little nervous, "we're here because we're concerned about the wellbeing of my godson."
"We want custody," Remus says. He pulls out the copy of James and Lily's will that he was presented when he was brought the information about his inheritance. "It's in his parents will that he should be left in the care of his godfather in the event of his parents' passing." He hands the will over the desk to her. She pushes her glasses up her face and flips through the will, scanning it quickly with her eyes.
"Yes, that's me," Sirius says. "The godfather."
She nods thoughtfully, scanning her finger along the words on the paperwork, then pauses, her eyes wide and eyebrows sky-high. She looks up at them. "Potter? Harry Potter?"
"That's right," says Sirius. He sounds like he's ready to start a fight if he has to, so Remus puts his hand on his forearm.
She simply nods again and keeps reading, although she now looks much more intrigued by the situation. She looks up again and looks at Remus. "And you are the husband?"
"Oh, no," Remus sputters, and pulls his hand back into his own lap when he catches her eyes flick down to where it's resting on Sirius's arm. "No, a- a friend." Friend seems wrong somehow, here, considering it all. Friend seems far too casual for whatever they are.
"We live together," Sirius says, glancing at Remus quickly. "He'll— we will raise Harry together."
She hums in acknowledgement, looking between the two of them one more time before continuing with her reading. The rest of the meeting goes smoother, as they recount the events that lead to this moment — how Harry ended up at the Dursley's, why they think they are an unfit environment for him. In the end, she is nodding along with them, concerned.
"I will say, gentlemen, that it is not necessarily up to me where a child ends up. There are some rather troubling extenuating circ*mstances, in this case, and some very powerful people have letters of recommendation filed with Harry's paperwork. The war, and the danger posed to little Harry by You-Know-Who's followers that remain cannot be understated." she says, thoughtfully. "But what I can do for you is begin the process. We will conduct a home inspection of the Dursley residence. I will say, it may be easier to make a case if there were a wife involved?"
Sirius scoffs and shakes his head. "There is no wife."
"Very well. We will schedule the home inspection, and go from there. I will be in touch via owl in the coming days."
Out on the busy street outside of the Ministry, Sirius is fuming. "Wife! Where would I have found a bloody wife over the past six years?!"
Remus follows along beside him, watching him with some amusem*nt.
"Should have swanned in there with a demontor with a ring on its finger…do dementors have genders?" He glances at Remus, who shrugs. Sirius scoffs. "I don't need a wife, I have you!"
Remus looks down at his feet. They walk for some time, until Sirius finally gets most of his frustrations out of his system and is more or less calm. At least something is happening now, they decide, and that's a start. They'll just have to keep on top of things.
They fall into a companionable silence, not walking anywhere in particular. They eventually wind up wandering onto Diagon Alley.
"Do you really feel like the flat is a prison cell?" Remus asks after some time of no conversation.
"What?"
"You said that earlier, that you thought it was like a prison cell."
"No. Oh, no, that's not what I meant, Moony." Sirius bites the inside of his cheek and watches Remus pensively for a moment. "Well, I don't know. It's difficult to explain. I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin when the doors are closed for too long. It's not the flat, it's me. I think I feel that way everywhere, at the moment."
They're quiet for a short while.
"Oh don't look at me like that, please, it makes me feel broken."
Remus holds back a bitten off half-smile. "I don't—"
"Ha! Look who the dog dragged in!"
Remus and Sirius both swivel to the source of the haughty voice. Just the sound of it sends Remus's blood pressure rocketing, and his hand goes instantly to his wand, although he doesn't draw it.
Sirius sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes, donning the demeanor of an annoyed sibling. "Bellatrix."
"What brings you here, little cousin, last I heard you were busy rotting away in proverbial hell," she drolls, but Remus notices that, despite her relaxed demeanor, she has a hand slipped into the opposite flowing sleeve, where he is certain it has a wand in its grip. "Although, I suppose the murder of blood traitors doesn't warrant a very long sentence," she muses, a twitch of amusem*nt in her painted lips.
"I should think you'd know quite well who committed that particular murder, Bella," Sirius bites back. "I'm sure you massaged his rank old feet for him in preparation."
Bellatrix bristles, and her face hardens, but before she can get another word out, Sirius continues.
"No, no, let me." He adopts a high-pitched snooty tone of voice that, honestly, sounds nothing like Bellatrix's alto. "'Why Sirius, although you have always been the smartest and most gorgeous of us all, you are wrong! Old Voldie's feet and arse tasted of roses and cinnamon, and I'll not hear another wor—'" He's cut off with the sharp smack of Bellatrix's hand colliding with his cheek. It catches him off guard at first, and he brings his hand to his reddening cheek, wide-eyed, before he gets a hold of himself and a cruel grin spreads across his face. "Was I too close for comfort?"
Bellatrix screeches, startling several passers-by. The crowd in Diagon Alley is now giving the three of them a wide berth, some of them stopping nearby to watch the drama. Remus keeps an eye on the people around their edges, suddenly paranoid that Bellatrix may not be alone, and that this may, in fact, be a planned encounter.
She yanks her wand from her sleeve and points it directly at Sirius, a look of absolute mania over her face. "You will regret your insolence, little cousin," she says, laughing, although there is absolutely zero humor in her tone. "We should have buried you in the family plot the minute you abandoned your family!"
"We all make mistakes—" Sirius starts, with a shrug, but just at that moment Remus sees Bellatrix speak a curse under her breath, fury drawn into her features, and he shoves Sirius hard, the two of them just barely avoiding being struck by a sparking red curse that lands some feet behind them with a loud bang. It sends debris and dust into the air, and the crowd around them screaming and scattering.
"Draw your wand, you git!" Remus snaps, scrambling to his feet and dragging Sirius up with him by the elbow.
Sirius collects himself quickly and pulls out his wand. He quickly sends a curse shooting towards Bellatrix's feet, and the cobblestones below her shoes wiggle gently then start to absorb her feet like quicksand.
"How dare you!" She screams, and yanks her feet out of her shoes, hurriedly. She points her wand point blank directly at Sirius's head, and begins to screech, "AVADA—"
Remus's heart sinks. The tip of her wand glows green, viridian arcs of lightning shooting off of it as the spell powers up. Sirius has his wand up, and begins speaking but Remus can tell he won't be quick enough with any counter-spell, nor quick enough to get out of the way in time. He grabs Sirius's arm again and, in the blink of an eye and a loud crack splitting their ear drums they've apparated. For a brief second, they are in the middle of the woods, surrounded by trees and brambles. A second tug behind the navel, and they're on a stormy shore, their feet in a receding tide, salt water permeating their socks and filling their shoes with sand. A third, and they're at the front door of their flat.
Remus lets go of Sirius's arm and the two of them stumble awkwardly and collapse in front of the door, panting. Sirius's face looks green, like he might throw up. Remus doesn't feel much better.
"Why did you pull me away, Lupin, I had her!" Sirius spits at him, scrambling back into a standing position with an arm against their door for support. He slips once because their hall is puddled with sea water, but regains his balance quickly.
Remus uses the door handle to help pull himself into a standing position. "You did NOT have her, she was aiming a killing curse right at your bloody head!"
"If I killed her first, that wouldn't have mattered! You know what she's done, she was among the worst of them during the war! Who knows how many of our friends she's killed! You should have—"
"You weren't ready!" Remus's hands shake as he unlocks the door and yanks it open. The keys fall to the ground just inside the door and he doesn't bother picking them up. "And even if you were and you missed, you would have f*cking died! Were you in that cell practicing dueling for six years? Is it inconceivable to you that maybe you're rusty and that I don't want to lose you again permanently three days after f*cking getting you back!"
Sirius watches him with a stormy expression from the doorway for a moment before following him inside and slamming the door shut behind himself. He stalks directly to his bedroom and slams that door too.
"f*ck!" Remus spits, and flexes his shaking hands, trying to get his nerves to cool.
—
Remus hears the door creak open down the hallway about two hours later, followed by the gentle shutting of the bathroom door and the shower running.
In the time Sirius has been locked up, Remus has taken his own shower and then embarked upon the reorganization of his bookshelves that he was considering earlier. He just about wrapped it up by the time Sirius steps quietly into the living room and curls up on the couch. He watches Remus shuffle books around where he's sitting on the floor for a few minutes before speaking.
"You were right to pull me away. Probably. I am rusty."
Remus frowns, and shoves a stack of books onto the shelves in front of him.
"I never would have f*cked up like that before Azkaban."
"She doesn't fight fair," Remus says.
Sirius sighs and pushes his hair out of his face. "I can't be in the house, I need to go out. My head feels like it's full of bees."
It's not long until they're dressed and wandering the streets, looking for a place to grab a drink.
"Oi, isn't that your favorite haunt?" Sirius asks, nodding across the block, and Remus's stomach drops to see that he's talking about the Violet Harpy.
"Ohhh, I don't know if you'd like it there, maybe we should—'
"Oh, shut up, I just need a drink in me, I'm not fussy." Sirius says, and shoves Remus in the direction of the bar. Remus recalls Sirius being, actually, extremely fussy, but doesn't mention that.
They snatch a small table in the corner of the busy bar from two men who leave it to go dancing, and sit on the high bar stools drinking for a little while, talking. Sirius is anxious, his knee bouncing up and down, but when Remus asks him if he's ok and if he wants to go, he says no and that he's fine. When Remus asks him if he's sure, he simply says "I can't be at home right now," and disappears momentarily to order them more drinks.
Truth be told, Remus is far from relaxed himself. Every head of messy, piled-up dark hair and flowing garment warrants a double-take that Bellatrix hasn't somehow followed them home and then to the gay bar. He knows she'd never show up here accidentally, but it doesn't hurt to be on alert a few hours after nearly kicking the bucket at the hands of that maniac. Still, he doesn't see anyone especially murderous, and gratefully takes the fruity mixed drink that Sirius offers him when he shows up again.
"Mai Tai!" Sirius chirps.
"Remus!" Someone shouts from across the way, and Remus looks up to see a tan arm waving at him enthusiastically from between dancing bodies, approaching the two of them excitedly.
"Oh, Angel, hello," Remus smiles, shifting in his seat to face the new arrival. Remus really likes Angel. He's the first person he ever made friends with at this bar, and the first person he ever hooked up with, besides. They had slept together a couple more times since they first met in front of that painting by the restrooms, but had always kept it casual.
"Angel, hey?" Sirius says, his lips pursed around the straw of his own heavily-poured mixed drink. "I thought you said you didn't have a boyfriend."
"I don't, Angel is his name."
Sirius hums and takes a deep drink.
Angel, for his part, looks quite amused. "Are you on a date?" He asks, grinning up at Remus.
"Oh, no, this is just my flat mate, Sirius."
"Yeah, just his flat mate," Sirius says, with a terse nod. His straw still hasn't left his lips.
"Oh well in that case, would you care to dance?" Angel asks, slipping his arm into the crook of Remus's elbow and tugging him insistently off the stool without waiting for a real response.
"Oh, no, I couldn't, today's not really—"
"Go ahead, Moon, have some fun with your Angel," Sirius says.
"But—"
"Really, I'm a bad show right now anyway. I'll be alright." He reaches over and takes the drink from Remus's hand, and places it down on the table, freeing him to go dancing. He makes a shooing hand motion at Remus.
"Sirius…"
"Go."
Angel takes Remus's hand and pulls him reluctantly from his seat. Sirius smiles at him thinly as he walks away into the crowd.
When Remus looks over a little bit later, he catches Sirius watching him, a new drink to his lips, arm draped casually over the back of his bar stool and his back leaning up against the wall. He has one boot hooked into the foot rest of his stool, and the other long leg stretched out in front of him, so people have to step over it to get by. In the multicolor club lights he looks almost how Remus remembers him before Azkaban. He looks away when Remus catches his eye.
Angel wraps his arms around Remus's neck and spins him into the crowd, bouncing to the song blaring from the speakers surrounding the dance floor, and Remus tries to lose himself in the music.
He's nearly having fun, a few songs later, when he glances over to check on Sirius and sees a fit man with blonde hair sitting in Remus's abandoned seat, leaning across the small table into Sirius. Sirius has a small smile on his face, and Remus is surprised to see him looking almost shy — Sirius hasn't been shy a day in his life, as far as Remus is aware. He's used to Sirius being the one leaning in and whispering into stranger's ears at the bars, boisterously grabbing the hands of pretty girls and spinning them onto the dance floor confidently, so this is new.
Remus watches Sirius look into the crowd, his eyes scanning for something, until he catches Remus's eye, pauses, then smiles wider at the man speaking to him.
Remus feels suddenly irritated. He sees the man put his hand over Sirius's on the table.
"Go on then," Angel says into his ear, leaning in close so that he can be heard over the music.
"What?"
"You've been staring at him the entire time we've been dancing, Remus! Go!" Angel says, conspiratorially. He looks endlessly amused with the situation.
"It's not like that," Remus grumbles.
"Well it's like something, clearly, and honestly I prefer my dance partner to be paying more attention to me than his straight room mate so…"
Remus groans "Is it that obvious?"
"You practically have a neon sign on your forehead."
"Jesus…alright. Sorry."
"A'int gonna ruin my night, baby," Angel laughs and gives Remus a smack on the ass as he walks off to the other side of the bar. "See you around!"
—
Remus slides into his seat at their table, because the blonde has now moved out of it and is standing uncomfortably close to being between Sirius's legs, speaking closely into his ear. The corner of Sirius's mouth twitches when he notices Remus is back, and he hold eye contact with him as he nods in response to whatever the blonde man is saying. Remus does not look amused. Sirius raises an eyebrow at him.
Remus doesn't say anything, just watches Sirius and drinks his drink. Sirius shows his teeth.
"This is Dennis," he says.
Dennis, surprised not to have Sirius's attention any longer, looks over his shoulder at Remus.
Remus thinks, what kind of name is Dennis? Awful name. Remus thinks it makes him sound like he should be living in Nebraska. He nods at Dennis.
"Where's your Angel?"
"He's not my Angel."
Sirius shrugs.
"He's dancing with someone else."
"Bummer."
Remus shrugs.
"We were kind of having a moment here," says Dennis. Sirius grins, toothily.
"Were you?" Remus asks Sirius, who shrugs again, his eyes twinkling.
"Yeah, we were," says Dennis.
"I'm not stopping you," says Remus, but leans up against the wall and sips casually from his drink. Dennis sucks his teeth, annoyed. He leans in to Sirius again, muttering something into his ear. Remus can't take his eyes off where his hand is now positioned just below Sirius's jaw, his big fat fingers tangled in black curly hair. Then he realizes that Sirius has been staring right back at him and, feeling caught, feels his ears heat up and shoots his gaze into the crowd ahead of him instead. He spots Angel dancing with someone new on the other side of the room.
"You know what, I'm actually not really feeling it, Dennis," Sirius says, gently pushing Dennis's hand away from his face.
"Are you sure, darling? We've hardly even gotten started. Haven't even had you out on the dance floor yet."
"Yeah, not tonight, sorry love. Maybe next time."
Dennis sighs and shoots a cold glance at Remus briefly, but his eyes soften again when he looks back to Sirius. "Alright doll, look me up next time you're in here."
Sirius smiles at him and nods once, then watches him walk away.
"He said he'd have me seeing stars by the end of the night," Sirius says He reaches across the table and takes Remus's drink from his hand and sips from it.
Remus scoffs. "Didn't know you were looking…for stars…"
Sirius grins. "The attention's nice."
Remus makes a noncommittal sound and looks away across the bar again. He has no more drink to fiddle with, so he picks at his cuticles.
"Get me out of here, hey? I'm feeling claustrophobic."
—
Remus trails behind him as they wander out onto the street, but Sirius soon slows to match his pace, hands shoved in his pockets and hair blowing in the wind.
"Sorry, I feel like I can't sit still anywhere for too long," he says.
"Should have danced, maybe." Remus's ears are buzzing with the leftover hearing damage he surely acquired from the bar's booming sound system.
Sirius snorts. "Not with Dennis."
"Anyone there would have danced with you, even the lesbians probably," Remus says, lighting a joint.
Sirius grins, "You think so?"
"Yup," Remus says, popping the 'P' around an exhale of smoke.
"Not you, though."
"The lesbians only like me for my weed," Remus sighs.
"No," Sirius laughs, and shoves Remus's shoulder gently. "I mean, you wouldn't have danced with me."
"Oh."
"You were with your Angel."
"He's not my— I would have, if you asked." Remus watches Sirius walk along, his hands behind his head, staring straight up into the cloudy sky, not paying attention to where he was going other than to keep pace next to Remus. He offers Sirius the joint, and he takes it, taking a long drag from it and holding the smoke in his lungs for a second before letting it go in a plume and handing the joint back to Remus.
Remus weighs for a moment whether or not he should ask the next question but he’s tipsy enough that he finally decides, f*ck it. "Would you have gone home with Den—"
Suddenly there isn't a man walking next to him, but instead a big black dog bounding off into the darkness of the park they're walking next to, lit by sparse yellowy street lamps. The dog barks, hopping backwards until Remus sighs, rolls his eyes, and follows him in. Remus tosses the butt of his joint into the dirt and crushes it under his heel just as Padfoot appears in front of him again, scrambling out of some brambles with a big stick between his teeth. He cracks Remus across the knees with the stick accidentally as he offers it to him.
"Ow—sh*t, Pads, are you trying to take me out?" He mutters, but grabs the stick and hurls it as hard as he can over his head into the nearby grassy field. They cross the park this way, Padfoot sprinting circles around him as Remus walks calmly toward their flat, throwing sticks as far as he can for Sirius to fetch. Padfoot is panting, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, when they get to their door. Remus leans the stick up against the small table in their entryway as he kicks off his shoes, and when he turns around, there is a giggling human Sirius, breathing heavily, hair tousled, spread out on the living room rug, his arms over his head and his cheeks pink.
"f*ck, that feels good," Sirius breathes, and swipes long hair out of his face. Remus kicks his legs out of the way and sits on the floor against the couch. "You don't know how often I thought about running like that over the years. Dreamed about it all the time."
Remus fishes the cookie box full of weed out of the coffee table, not particularly excited to sober up any time soon.
"You were there, usually. The wolf," Sirius says, tilting his head to look at him through sleepy, contended eyes. "And Prongs."
Remus smiles down at him, but the guilt overtakes him quickly. "I'm sorry I couldn't get you out."
"Oh, let's not talk about that," Sirius grumbles, and kicks his legs up in the air to leverage himself back into a sitting position. He scoots to sit in front of Remus, and Remus pulls his feet in to give him space as he fiddles around with rolling papers and the grinder on the coffee table, getting another joint together for them to share. Remus glances up at him, brow furrowed, then back down at his fingers. "Oi! I see you thinking about it, let's not think about it either."
Remus laughs bitterly. "It's hard not to. Been thinking about it for more than half a decade now."
He looks up when he feels Sirius' fingers wrap around his ankle gently. Sirius is looking at him from under his furrowed brow. "It's not your fault, okay?" He says, earnestly. "I don't blame you. Really. It was that fascist dickhe*d. It was Pete screwing us over. f*ck, it was the whole stupid system. Not you."
Remus looks down at Sirius's hand on his ankle and nods minutely. He knows that Sirius is right, but at the same time…there has to be more that he could have done. So many should-haves that haunt him.
Sirius lets go of Remus's ankle and flicks his nose. "Stop it! I'm meant to be the depressed one, stop stealing my schtick. You're going to confuse the ladies. I won't be able to compete, you maudlin git."
"Yeah, right," Remus snorts and rubs his nose, then licks the rolling paper of the joint to seal it and sets it alight. "We're a right pair, aren't we."
Sirius snigg*rs and pulls the joint from Remus's fingers. "At least we're not bloody fascists."
"Cheers to that."
Sirius reaches over Remus and grabs his wand off the table, flicking it languidly at the stereo until a random vinyl pulls itself off the shelf and sets itself under the needle. Down on the Street by The Stooges buzzes its way through the speakers at a low volume.
"I'm not ready to be sober yet," Remus says, and takes Sirius's wand from him, summoning the half-empty bottle of whiskey.
"Sad sack. Is this how you've been coping?"
"I thought being drunk was cool," Remus says, and takes a big swig straight from the bottle.
"Yeah, when we were seventeen," Sirius says, though he takes a swig from the bottle also. "But maybe we should get it out of our system before we have a seven year old running the place."
Remus watches Sirius with a thoughtful smile on his face. "You think we can do good for him, Pads?" He asks. "The cat barely even tolerates me."
Sirius laughs and passes the bottle. "The cat loves you!"
"Only because I feed her."
"I'll let you cook Harry all his suppers, he's sure to grow attached then."
Remus blows a raspberry and sinks down against the couch. "It'll be fine," he says at length. "He'll do great. We'll do great. I'll learn to make pancakes."
"That's the spirit, Moony-boy!" Sirius says, and smacks him on the thigh from where he's lounged out on the carpet near him again. "For ol' Prongsie!"
"For Prongs!" Remus toasts, and takes a deep chug, winces, "Yeugh. Disgusting." He deposits the bottle on the coffee table. "You know, I never thought I'd have kids at all."
"Whaaat!"
"Well it's highly unlikely that I'll ever get anyone pregnant."
Sirius snorts. "But you're so good with 'em, Moon!"
"Am I?"
"'Course, don' you remember how you were the only one that could get Harry to stop cryin' if Lils weren't around?" Sirius laughs. "He'd be squealing for hours if it was left up to me or Jam."
Remus snickers at that, hooks one elbow on the couch cushions and rests his tired head on the palm of his hand, watching Sirius laying there. His hair is splayed out across the rug in a dark halo around his head, and his cheeks are pink with drink and from sprinting across town as Padfoot. It makes him look young. Remus hopes he doesn't cut his hair too short whenever he gets around to it, although, he thinks, he'd probably look gorgeous even bald. It is somewhere around this time when Remus notices that Sirius's hand is still on his thigh, tattoos curling around his fingers and down his wrist.
"Um," Remus says. "Yeh, well, that's 'cuz you an' Prongs don't have an inside voice. He'd be wanting to take a nap and the two of yuz would be bouncing him around telling him to hush at football pitch volume."
"Ha! See, you know 'zac'ly what he needs." Sirius says. "You'll be great."
Remus is suddenly not sure what to do with the hand that isn't propping his head up, so he makes use of it by picking up the whiskey again. "And what'll you tell all these ladies you're expecting to be attracting with your depression?"
"What d'you mean?"
"Well, y'know…" He puts on his best Sirius Black impression. Mostly it just sounds like he's drunk and pretending to be in line for the throne. "''Ello, darling, welcome to my humble two-bedroom abode, please ignore my twenty-seven year old gay platonic flat mate lounging on the couch. That is just the co-parent of my seven year old godson. It's not weird, I promise. Anyway, he'll be gone as soon as he finishes that chapter, it's a full moon tonight. Don't ask! Shall we have a quickie in my bedroom before I have to pick up Harry from school?'"
Sirius makes a valiant effort to kick him in the head but misses. "I do not sound like that!"
Remus cackles and leans back to make it harder for him to reach his face. "'Pip-pip, sweetheart, get a move on, the leg won't get over on its own! Cheers, darl—'" He dissolves into giggles into Sirius's hand, which is now pressed firmly over his mouth.
"Really, I'm starting to think you don't remember me at all," Sirius sighs dramatically.
Remus tries to speak but it's muffled behind Sirius's hand, so he huffs and gives up.
Sirius squints at him and lifts half his hand off of his face to let him speak. "What was that, you barmy bastard?"
"I said, I remember every single thing about you." Remus says, the last of his giggles dissipating. "No matter how hard I tried to forget."
Sirius half-laughs and lets his hand fall. It rests for a second on Remus's chest before Sirius pulls it away completely into his own lap. "That can't be true."
"It's true," Remus says, and taps himself on the forehead. "You're burned in there. Permanent."
The amusem*nt that was on Sirius's face falls away, and he watches Remus with those big grey eyes, the color of the sea on an overcast morning.
"I was f*cked from the off, I think," Remus sighs, and looks down at the bottle in his hand. He follows the bottle with his eyes as Sirius takes it from him and puts it down on the coffee table with a clink. He has to blink to focus, his vision swimming gently, as Sirius takes him by the chin and turns his face to look him in the eye. He thinks Sirius is going to say something, because he watches his lips part as if he's about to start speaking, but then, instead, he's close, so close.
He's kissing him. Every thought Remus has ever had that wasn't about this, here, now, kissing Sirius Black, flees his mind, and all there is, is Sirius's soft lips, and his thigh under Remus's hand, and his breath on Remus's face. It's gentle, and slow, and devastating — it makes Remus feel like his heart will bust open and spill all over the rug.
Sirius pulls away, slowly, and Remus chases his lips, but he rests his forehead against Remus's and he doesn’t push it. Remus can feel the tickle of Sirius's eyelashes on his cheeks when he says "A bit out of practice," quietly into the space between them, his voice rough.
"I don't remember us ever having practiced," Remus says.
Sirius breathes out a laugh. "I can't believe I did that."
"In a bad way?"
"Not even a little bit."
"Oh, good," Remus mutters, and tilts his head to catch Sirius's lips again. He revels in the small sound Sirius makes; in Sirius’s hand on his jaw; in the way he makes room for Remus to scoot closer and grabs a handful of his shirt to keep him there.
It buds and blooms like a flower. The tentative kisses give way to confident ones, to tongue and teeth, then desperation. Sirius grunts, the breath knocked out of him slightly when Remus pushes him what he thought was gently onto his back but overestimates the force. He laughs at the look on Remus’s face, grabs him by the collar, and yanks him down on top of himself, lips clashing. The stinted gasps as their bodies press against each other fill the room.
Sirius bucks his hips up into Remus, and Remus moans. He kisses across Sirius's jaw, pushes his hair aside to kiss down his neck, licks and bites at the spot where it meets his shoulder. Sirius's hands are cold on his hot skin when he slips them under his sweater, they trace the bumps of his spine like they're trying to memorize the topography.
“What did you mean?" Sirius breathes into his hair, then lets his head fall back with a muted thump against the rug. He closes his eyes and tilts his head to give Remus better access to his neck. "You were f*cked…is this what you meant?"
Remus pauses in his kissing for a moment. He rests his cheek against Sirius's shoulder and takes a beat. Then he kisses his way back up along Sirius's neck, gentle and slow, from the clavicle to the Adam's apple to the chin, a map of kisses. He looks Sirius in the eye, then, and sees nerves, sees his irises blown wide and his brow crinkled, and he feels just drunk and stupid enough to let himself be vulnerable.
He brushes the black curls that have fallen into Sirius's eyes off his face, gently — traces his fingers along his sharp cheekbones and jaw. He shrugs a little bit, feeling shy suddenly. "I think I've always been at least a little bit in love with you," he mutters.
Remus isn’t sure what emotion he’s reading in Sirius’s expression— there’s surprise, certainly, but also something unnamed that plants a seed of hope in Remus’s chest.
“f*ck, Moon,” Sirius growls, and before Remus can quite follow how it happened, he’s the one on his back, and Sirius has his leg slotted between his thighs. “You can’t just say sh*t like that.”
“I don’t know, I’m enjoying the consequences,” Remus grins, until Sirius is kissing him, licking his tongue into his mouth in a way that sends sparks up Remus’s spine. He’s so hard he thinks he’ll pass out of blood lost from his brain.
Sirius drags his hands under Remus’s sweater again, this time pulling it up and, with Remus’s help, over his head. He sits back, straddling Remus’s lap, and Remus watches him with his hands on Sirius’s thighs as Sirius, eyes dancing with unmistakeable affection, runs his hands along Remus’s body, follows the lines of the scars that he’s collected over the years of painful full-moon transformations, over the biggest scar bitten into his side that made him who he is. Remus's first instinct is to feel self-conscious, he's never been particularly proud of these slashes through his skin. But Sirius treats them so delicately, that he almost wishes he had more, if only to give Sirius more to trace with his fingers.
Remus bucks his hips under Sirius, and Sirius bites back a smirk, meeting his eyes. They watch each other for a moment, Remus monumentally distracted by the fact that Sirius now has a couple fingers hooked under the hem of his jeans.
"I don't look the same," Sirius says, at length, sounding almost shy himself. This new coyness in him makes Remus's heart swell, it makes him want to wrap Sirius up and keep him safe from whatever poked and prodded and deflated his usual boisterous overconfidence over the past years. It makes him want to destroy the whole system that had a hand in it. "Lost a lot of weight."
Remus sits himself up as far as Sirius in his lap will let him, props himself up on his arms against the carpet. "You still look like you," he says.
"I hardly recognize myself," Sirius says, and Remus shifts his hips so that Sirius backs up slightly in his lap and allows him to sit up all the way. He wraps his arms around Sirius and buries his face in his neck. He does feel more delicate, almost bird-like, a sharp contrast to the solid, sturdy young man that he was when he was first dragged into that prison kicking and screaming. Remus can feel his ribs under his fingers. But he's still Sirius.
"I recognize you," Remus says into his skin, kisses that spot to seal in the sentiment; memorizes the sigh Sirius breathes when he kisses him. "You're right here," he says.
Sirius pulls back and watches him through his curtain of dark curls, emotions swirling through his features that Remus can hardly hope to understand. Then he takes Remus by the chin and kisses him so tenderly that it almost hurts. "Take me to bed, Moony."
