Fic: Ten Years Gone for digthewriter
Title: Ten Years Gone
Author/Artist: museinabsentia
Recipient: digthewriter
Rating: T
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): * None *
Word count: ~3600
Summary: Ten years and some questionably legal food lead to a long overdue discussion.
Notes: A huge thank you to little_werewolf both for the lovely beta job and also for putting up with my whining when I just couldn’t make words happen. All remaining mistakes are mine, since I may have continued to meddle after the fact.
There were fat, lazy snowflakes meandering their way down from an otherwise pristine early evening sky, giving the streets of Diagon Alley a lightly sugared quality. Throngs of people were leaving tracks in the fresh white, millions of footprints defying the laws of physics, overlapping and melding into a history of the harried shopper.
Sirius was standing just beyond the entrance from The Leaky Cauldron, just watching all the people scurry by, trying to get his bearings. He wasn't sure where to start, instead he just picked a direction and started wandering, hoping for inspiration to strike. With only a week until Christmas desperation was starting to set in.
He nearly collided with a woman who was trying to wrangle two small children who kept escaping her grasp and darting back and forth between storefronts. Chuckling, he was grateful that at least he could say he had the shortest attention span of his shopping part of one.
The air was frigid and Sirius set about trying to keep himself amused by seeing if he could blow rings with his breath now that he had quit smoking, and chuckling to himself every time he failed. Of course, he hadn't been able to do it when he was still smoking, either.
James was leaning as far out of the dorm window as his lanky frame would allow, arm leaning on Sirius' leg as Sirius straddled the windowsill, one bare foot kicking against the outer stone wall of the tower. They were both laughing as they tried, and failed, to blow smoke rings, pretending that they weren't coughing every time they inhaled on the smokes James had nicked from Caradoc Dearborn's bag at breakfast two days earlier.
The door banged open and Sirius just managed to not turn around and exhale into the room, remembering at the last minute to blow the smoke outside.
"Hey, Moony, want to come blow smoke rings?" James called, grinning.
Remus snorted and closed the door behind him. "You two pillocks aren't blowing smoke rings, you're just stinking up the dorm with your illegal cigarettes. Take them outside so my bed curtains don't smell like stale smoke."
"Or anything of mine," Peter piped in from where he was currently scribbling away at his History of Magic essay. "If mum smells smoke on anything of mine when we go home for hols next week she'd hex me into next year, and I don't trust any of you lot to do a proper freshening charm."
James' brow furrowed and he looked like he was about to argue, so Sirius jumped in, climbing back in through the window after tossing his finished cigarette outside. "Might as well take these down by the lake, mate, see if Lily doesn't think you look cool."
James immediately perked up at that prospect, and Sirius winked at Remus, which promptly settled that. All four of them traipsed down to the edge of the lake, Sirius letting his hand brush gently against Remus' for the entire walk. They never did manage to figure out how to blow smoke rings. Well, except for Remus, who did it perfectly on the first try.,
How cool they had all thought they were at the time.
Of course, James had given it up when he first got married. Lily had threatened him with bodily harm if he couldn't quit by the time they had children, and James, who had been conditioned from years of failed wooing attempts to do anything that Lily said, had managed to quit just before Harry was born. Of course, Harry was ten now, and forbidden from hearing about the many infamous exploits of his father and uncles.
Sirius had taken longer; indulging himself for years in seedy pubs with expensive whiskey and cheap company, both in muggle and magical varieties as the mood struck him. He always went home alone, though, and eventually he had stopped going out much, and the cigarettes had just sort of disappeared one day. He didn't miss them.
No one knew where Remus was.
The strange bout of nostalgia the weather had brought about was a fragile thing, threatening to break apart and leave him spiraling down into melancholy even as he walked between cheerful holiday shoppers and even more cheerful holiday decorations. Trying to shake it he clapped his gloved hands together, inwardly wishing that his cloak was warmer, or that he had thought to put on a heavy jumper instead of the navy blue robes that he was wearing because he had forgotten to do the laundry this week. His warming charms had always been a bit shoddy since Remus had always cast them for him when they were younger, and all the years since hadn't helped him any. Now he was simply cold.
The crowds in Diagon Alley were pressing, and Sirius had to fight the urge to slip into Padfoot's fur and nip at a few heels just to buy himself a little room. Or, at the very least, take visceral pleasure in tearing down all the bloody decorations with his teeth, ripping them into pieces the same size as the shredded tatters of his holiday spirit lately.
"I suppose this is what I get for putting off shopping until the last minute," he muttered to himself, as he scanned the storefronts for something, anything, to give him inspiration. When they were all in school he had prided himself on his gift giving abilities, but now that his friends had all somehow become adults without him he was afraid he wouldn't be able to live up to his reputation. What did one give the prat who finally married the love of his life, had a child and a house and a job he actually liked, and was so bloody happy that it turned Sirius' stomach? And why did it just keep getting more difficult with each passing year?
Lunch with Peter had been of no help. Peter had gotten James season passes to the local Quidditch team, and was fairly smug about it.
His mum had finally, after much grumbling, given over full control of the family greenhouse and potion shop to him. He hadn't even had the place a full week when a sudden spate of Fairy Flu started going around and sales at Pettigrew's Plants, Powders and Preventives started flourishing. Peter was expressing his windfall in the form of extravagant gifts this year.
Sirius was still at a loss.
There was a long line outside Fortescue's that seemed at odds with the weather, until Sirius spotted the sign in the window advertising in glowing letters the new hot ice cream, perfect for the cold weather. A couple emerged from the small shop with matching cones of what looked like perfectly normal chocolate ice cream except for the steam curling off the top.
A longer wait in line than he had anticipated and Sirius was no closer to having a gift idea for James than he had been twenty minutes earlier. He was, however, wondering if it would be worth the effort to break into Fortescue's after hours to steal a vat of the hot mulled wine ice cream he was currently internally swooning over. Or maybe the recipe. And figure out how they made the dragon shaped cones that let the steam curl out from between chocolate dipped fangs.
He was just finishing off the last couple of bites when a voice came rather close to his ear. "Trust you to appreciate what is probably only questionably legal food."
Sirius was quipping, "How can food be questionably legal, Moony," before he had even processed who had spoken from behind him. Whirling around he came face to face with Remus, albeit a much thinner and more careworn Remus than he remembered.
It took less than a breath before he had pulled Remus into a rough hug, feeling his ribs even through his threadbare wool jacket and denims. Remus always had preferred muggle clothes too, when given the option.
When he pulled back there was an indecipherable expression on Remus' face, but he schooled it away quickly, hiding it behind a wry smile. "With you, Padfoot, anything can be questionably legal."
All right, if Remus wasn't going to make a big deal out of his prolonged absence then Sirius wouldn't either. At least for now. He could do casual. He could do charming. He could refrain from asking why their friend had disappeared for nearly a decade without a word. He could even manage to not ask about the wrinkles at the corners of Remus' warm brown eyes, or the grey at his temples, or how they had fallen apart so completely when it had seemed the most like they were finally falling together.
"As if you didn't inspire at least half of those questionably legal activities."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Sirius," Remus said loftily with a completely ingenuous smile. For a moment Sirius forgot about how they both must have changed, the ache that he had always buried around his friend welling up and threatening to spill out in words that he wouldn't be able to take back. Words he knew he wouldn't want to take back, even now. Words he didn't have the right to say anymore, and probably never had.
Instead he slung an arm around Remus' shoulder, letting the years melt away under the heat of contact, and flashed a bright, crooked grin. "Let me buy you dinner? We can catch up and you can tell me all the brilliant things you've been up to since we last heard from you."
There was a moment where Sirius was sure Remus was going to turn him down, little lines forming between his eyes, the corners of his mouth turning down. Only someone who had spent as many years studying his face as Sirius had would even notice. When he finally smiled at Sirius it didn't quite meet his eyes, but his voice stayed warm. "I'd like that, Padfoot," he said softly, leaning into Sirius, whose arm was still draped across his shoulders.
"Good. Just let me pop home and change into something a little more fitting not freezing to death. You’d think if they were going to use crystal balls to predict the weather they’d be a little better at it." Sirius loosened his grip around his friend without removing his arm completely, reluctant to let go for fear that Remus would vanish into the crowd and it would be another ten years before he heard from him again.
"You always were hopeless with warming charms," Remus laughed, pulling out his wand and casually flicking it at Sirius despite the awkward angle of being so close.
Sirius was suddenly warm in a way that had nothing to do with warming charms. "Do you want to meet me somewhere?" he asked cautiously.
Remus seemed to pick up on his hesitancy, because he smiled a lot more gently and leaned a little more fully into Sirius before he carefully extricated himself. "And miss seeing how you live now that there's no one around to remind you to pick up your socks?"
"There might be a take away carton or two still on the kitchen counter." Sirius acknowledged with a chuckle.
Remus cocked an eyebrow at him. "Do you mean to say you haven't learned to feed yourself, either?"
"Why do you think I offered to buy you dinner?"
Before he could second guess himself, and with Remus' amused snort still in his ears, Sirius reached out, wrapping his arms around Remus and apparated them both into his flat, startling a couple of owls on their way in with the mail for the day.
They landed with a small pop and Remus stumbled at the unfamiliar terrain. Sirius caught him, only holding on for a moment longer than he should.
Reluctantly he slowly let go and stepped away, heading towards the bedroom. "Make yourself at home, I'll only be a minute."
Pulling the door only partway closed Sirius stripped off his robes and tossed them in a heap in the direction of the laundry pile waiting to be washed. A quick examination of his remaining clean clothes and he sighed and cast a hasty freshening charm at a deep teal dress shirt and denims that were deemed at least free of stains. He was checking his hair in the mirror while trying to convince himself that he wasn't trying to impress Remus of all people. That Remus had seen him covered in purple boils while belching orange smoke, thanks to a charm gone wrong. That there was nothing left to prove.
He had never been very good at lying to himself.
When he emerged from his bedroom he found Remus sitting on the very edge of his sagging sofa staring at the wall. His jacket was folded across his lap and he was fidgeting with the buttons, seemingly unaware that he was doing it.
"Sirius," he said softly, his voice low and rough.
Grey eyes followed Remus' gaze and settled on the large mottled blue wall opposite the hallway and the magical lunar chart that was painted there. It showed the rising and setting of the moon as well as the phases, glowing faintly as the sliver of a near dark moon started appearing in the sky and began its slow crawl across the wall.
"What's this?" Remus continued, still not looking at Sirius.
Breath caught in his throat, Sirius froze in the entranceway, unable to make his feet propel him into the room. "I would think you would recognize it, Remus," he said, going for flippant but coming across a little more strangled. Maybe bringing Remus to his flat wasn't the best idea after all.
"Sirius." This time his name was little more than a growl, and Remus finally turned, his eyes guarded, lips pressed into a thin line.
All the air that had been trapped in his lungs came out in one long whoosh, his knees only keeping him upright through determination. A heartbeat passed. Then another. Finally Sirius forced himself into the room, draping himself over the back of the sofa so that he had an excuse to break away from the way Remus' fierce gaze was holding him captive.
"I missed you," he muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
Remus propped a knee up against the back of the sofa so he could spin around and face Sirius. "Did you?" he asked quietly and a little disbelieving.
Sirius wanted to be angry. He wanted to rage at the presumption that he wouldn't; that no one would mind if Remus just disappeared. He wanted to scream that he had loved Remus all those years ago, had probably never really stopped, and why hadn’t they ever just talked about it instead of hedging around it like talking would have broken it, would have broken them. Instead he just felt tired, wrung out in a way that had nothing to do with physical limitations and more to do with the ache settling into his heart.
"You do know that I was in love with you." Sirius didn't bother to make it a question. After ten years without so much as an owl from Remus there was little he could do that could make it worse. He had learned to get by without him, barely noticing the empty space that had become a permanent part of his life, even when it threatened to engulf him.
That made Remus look away, his eyes downcast. "It's been a long time, Sirius." His voice was barely audible, hesitant in a way that Sirius had never associated with Remus before. "I thought you would be over that by now."
The words trickled cold, a poorly cast freezing charm sliding down his spine.
It took a moment before Sirius could swallow down the urge to ask if that was why Remus left, because he didn't want to face Sirius and his apparently obvious domestic impulses towards his friend. Slinking around the sofa Sirius slumped down next to Remus. "Yeah," he muttered. "I thought I would be, too." A humorless laugh escaped him before he could stop himself. "But we all know how often I was actually right, eh Moony?"
Remus didn't say anything, didn't look at him, opting instead to stare at the slowly rising moon on the wall.
The silence was oppressive, threatening to smother Sirius until he couldn't take it. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, now or then," he said softly, eyes glued to where his knuckles were turning white against his knees, gripping hard enough to leave bruises that he couldn't feel. "And I certainly didn't mean to make you run away for ten years."
A strangled little noise that Remus choked out was the only indication that he was listening at all. Finally, with a shake of his head, Remus turned to face Sirius, head cocked to the side like he was trying to puzzle Sirius out. "Is that really what you think happened?"
Sirius didn't have the energy left for this. Somehow the appearance of Remus after all these years had sapped the last little bit of will that he holidays hadn't already stolen. He fought the urge to curl into a little ball and pretend none of this was happening. Preferably with Remus at his side, but that was looking less and less possible by the second.
"I don't know, Remus. You just disappeared. One day we were all inseparable, the next no one knew what had happened to you." He bit back the I wanted to find you. I tried. The likelihood of Remus appreciating the sentiment was slim. "What else was I supposed to think? I wasn't exactly subtle back then."
The wry little smile Remus flashed, so fast Sirius wasn't sure it had happened, was equal parts resigned and indulgent. "You still aren't."
Sirius choked out a laugh. "You're probably right."
Remus scrubbed a hand over his face, looking much older than his thirty-one years. "I left because I couldn't find a job, Sirius. It had nothing to do with you, or with anyone except myself."
"And that somehow meant you couldn't owl? For a decade?"
Remus snorted. "You and James and Pete, you were the best friends a bloke could ask for, but the lot of you would have stormed the Ministry the second you found out about all the regulations that made it impossible for werewolves to find work. I didn't want that."
A deep breath. Another. Sirius knew that getting angry now wouldn't change the last ten years, and it wouldn't make this conversation any easier. "We would have helped, Remus, you have to know that."
"Of course I know that," Remus snapped, refusing to look at Sirius, instead staring resolutely at the blue plaid of the sofa. "But I couldn't risk being dependent on you lot. What would I have done when you inevitably grew tired of me, tired of supporting someone who had nothing to offer in return?"
And oh! That hadn't been what Sirius had been expecting at all. He felt the tension melt out of his shoulders, sagging back with a little sigh. "Remus. Moony, look at me?"
Hesitantly, Remus turned, his eyes guarded, wide and cautious at once.
Very slowly Sirius reached out, waiting for Remus to pull away. When he didn't, Sirius ran a finger along the edge of his jaw, noting the way Remus shivered against him even from that. "It's been ten years, Moony, and no one has ever lived up to the comparisons I tell myself I'm not making. I've been in love with the ghost of you for a very long time, and lying to myself about it hasn't really made it any less true. I would have gladly supported you for the rest of your life. It’s not as if I’ve had to earn my money." He paused long enough to let that settle into the air between them, heavy for all that it was true. “I still would, if it came to that,” he added softly.
Sirius expected Remus to argue with him, to tell him that he couldn't still love him after all these years. Maybe even tell him that he hadn't really loved him before. He expected Remus to let him down gently, but firmly.
When Remus leaned into his hand, breath stuttering, eyes falling closed, Sirius tasted his pulse at the back of his throat. "You are a very difficult man to get over," Remus whispered, so quietly that Sirius almost missed it.
"So don't. It's probably too late to go out now, and I still can't cook, but we can order take-away and talk about this and maybe give it a go?" Sirius spoke in a rush and Remus blinked hazily at him for a moment before smiling, a real smile that went all the way up to his eyes.
“We could do that,” Remus answered slowly.
“But?” Sirius asked hesitantly.
"I'd rather spend the evening snogging like a couple of teenagers," Remus replied with a wicked grin.
Sirius let out a startled bark of laughter and leaned in, watching Remus' face for any signs of reluctance. Seeing none, he pressed their mouths together, just a light brush that whited out his brain when Remus tangled his fingers into Sirius' hair and tugged.
Breaking away with a little gasp, Sirius leaned their foreheads together, sliding an arm around Remus and pulling him against his chest, feeling them breathe in tandem. He knew they should talk, that this wasn’t going to be as easy as pretending the last ten years hadn’t happened, but he was reluctant to let go now that he finally knew what the warmth of Remus against him felt like. "Both. We can do both."
Author/Artist: museinabsentia
Recipient: digthewriter
Rating: T
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): * None *
Word count: ~3600
Summary: Ten years and some questionably legal food lead to a long overdue discussion.
Notes: A huge thank you to little_werewolf both for the lovely beta job and also for putting up with my whining when I just couldn’t make words happen. All remaining mistakes are mine, since I may have continued to meddle after the fact.
There were fat, lazy snowflakes meandering their way down from an otherwise pristine early evening sky, giving the streets of Diagon Alley a lightly sugared quality. Throngs of people were leaving tracks in the fresh white, millions of footprints defying the laws of physics, overlapping and melding into a history of the harried shopper.
Sirius was standing just beyond the entrance from The Leaky Cauldron, just watching all the people scurry by, trying to get his bearings. He wasn't sure where to start, instead he just picked a direction and started wandering, hoping for inspiration to strike. With only a week until Christmas desperation was starting to set in.
He nearly collided with a woman who was trying to wrangle two small children who kept escaping her grasp and darting back and forth between storefronts. Chuckling, he was grateful that at least he could say he had the shortest attention span of his shopping part of one.
The air was frigid and Sirius set about trying to keep himself amused by seeing if he could blow rings with his breath now that he had quit smoking, and chuckling to himself every time he failed. Of course, he hadn't been able to do it when he was still smoking, either.
James was leaning as far out of the dorm window as his lanky frame would allow, arm leaning on Sirius' leg as Sirius straddled the windowsill, one bare foot kicking against the outer stone wall of the tower. They were both laughing as they tried, and failed, to blow smoke rings, pretending that they weren't coughing every time they inhaled on the smokes James had nicked from Caradoc Dearborn's bag at breakfast two days earlier.
The door banged open and Sirius just managed to not turn around and exhale into the room, remembering at the last minute to blow the smoke outside.
"Hey, Moony, want to come blow smoke rings?" James called, grinning.
Remus snorted and closed the door behind him. "You two pillocks aren't blowing smoke rings, you're just stinking up the dorm with your illegal cigarettes. Take them outside so my bed curtains don't smell like stale smoke."
"Or anything of mine," Peter piped in from where he was currently scribbling away at his History of Magic essay. "If mum smells smoke on anything of mine when we go home for hols next week she'd hex me into next year, and I don't trust any of you lot to do a proper freshening charm."
James' brow furrowed and he looked like he was about to argue, so Sirius jumped in, climbing back in through the window after tossing his finished cigarette outside. "Might as well take these down by the lake, mate, see if Lily doesn't think you look cool."
James immediately perked up at that prospect, and Sirius winked at Remus, which promptly settled that. All four of them traipsed down to the edge of the lake, Sirius letting his hand brush gently against Remus' for the entire walk. They never did manage to figure out how to blow smoke rings. Well, except for Remus, who did it perfectly on the first try.,
How cool they had all thought they were at the time.
Of course, James had given it up when he first got married. Lily had threatened him with bodily harm if he couldn't quit by the time they had children, and James, who had been conditioned from years of failed wooing attempts to do anything that Lily said, had managed to quit just before Harry was born. Of course, Harry was ten now, and forbidden from hearing about the many infamous exploits of his father and uncles.
Sirius had taken longer; indulging himself for years in seedy pubs with expensive whiskey and cheap company, both in muggle and magical varieties as the mood struck him. He always went home alone, though, and eventually he had stopped going out much, and the cigarettes had just sort of disappeared one day. He didn't miss them.
No one knew where Remus was.
The strange bout of nostalgia the weather had brought about was a fragile thing, threatening to break apart and leave him spiraling down into melancholy even as he walked between cheerful holiday shoppers and even more cheerful holiday decorations. Trying to shake it he clapped his gloved hands together, inwardly wishing that his cloak was warmer, or that he had thought to put on a heavy jumper instead of the navy blue robes that he was wearing because he had forgotten to do the laundry this week. His warming charms had always been a bit shoddy since Remus had always cast them for him when they were younger, and all the years since hadn't helped him any. Now he was simply cold.
The crowds in Diagon Alley were pressing, and Sirius had to fight the urge to slip into Padfoot's fur and nip at a few heels just to buy himself a little room. Or, at the very least, take visceral pleasure in tearing down all the bloody decorations with his teeth, ripping them into pieces the same size as the shredded tatters of his holiday spirit lately.
"I suppose this is what I get for putting off shopping until the last minute," he muttered to himself, as he scanned the storefronts for something, anything, to give him inspiration. When they were all in school he had prided himself on his gift giving abilities, but now that his friends had all somehow become adults without him he was afraid he wouldn't be able to live up to his reputation. What did one give the prat who finally married the love of his life, had a child and a house and a job he actually liked, and was so bloody happy that it turned Sirius' stomach? And why did it just keep getting more difficult with each passing year?
Lunch with Peter had been of no help. Peter had gotten James season passes to the local Quidditch team, and was fairly smug about it.
His mum had finally, after much grumbling, given over full control of the family greenhouse and potion shop to him. He hadn't even had the place a full week when a sudden spate of Fairy Flu started going around and sales at Pettigrew's Plants, Powders and Preventives started flourishing. Peter was expressing his windfall in the form of extravagant gifts this year.
Sirius was still at a loss.
There was a long line outside Fortescue's that seemed at odds with the weather, until Sirius spotted the sign in the window advertising in glowing letters the new hot ice cream, perfect for the cold weather. A couple emerged from the small shop with matching cones of what looked like perfectly normal chocolate ice cream except for the steam curling off the top.
A longer wait in line than he had anticipated and Sirius was no closer to having a gift idea for James than he had been twenty minutes earlier. He was, however, wondering if it would be worth the effort to break into Fortescue's after hours to steal a vat of the hot mulled wine ice cream he was currently internally swooning over. Or maybe the recipe. And figure out how they made the dragon shaped cones that let the steam curl out from between chocolate dipped fangs.
He was just finishing off the last couple of bites when a voice came rather close to his ear. "Trust you to appreciate what is probably only questionably legal food."
Sirius was quipping, "How can food be questionably legal, Moony," before he had even processed who had spoken from behind him. Whirling around he came face to face with Remus, albeit a much thinner and more careworn Remus than he remembered.
It took less than a breath before he had pulled Remus into a rough hug, feeling his ribs even through his threadbare wool jacket and denims. Remus always had preferred muggle clothes too, when given the option.
When he pulled back there was an indecipherable expression on Remus' face, but he schooled it away quickly, hiding it behind a wry smile. "With you, Padfoot, anything can be questionably legal."
All right, if Remus wasn't going to make a big deal out of his prolonged absence then Sirius wouldn't either. At least for now. He could do casual. He could do charming. He could refrain from asking why their friend had disappeared for nearly a decade without a word. He could even manage to not ask about the wrinkles at the corners of Remus' warm brown eyes, or the grey at his temples, or how they had fallen apart so completely when it had seemed the most like they were finally falling together.
"As if you didn't inspire at least half of those questionably legal activities."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Sirius," Remus said loftily with a completely ingenuous smile. For a moment Sirius forgot about how they both must have changed, the ache that he had always buried around his friend welling up and threatening to spill out in words that he wouldn't be able to take back. Words he knew he wouldn't want to take back, even now. Words he didn't have the right to say anymore, and probably never had.
Instead he slung an arm around Remus' shoulder, letting the years melt away under the heat of contact, and flashed a bright, crooked grin. "Let me buy you dinner? We can catch up and you can tell me all the brilliant things you've been up to since we last heard from you."
There was a moment where Sirius was sure Remus was going to turn him down, little lines forming between his eyes, the corners of his mouth turning down. Only someone who had spent as many years studying his face as Sirius had would even notice. When he finally smiled at Sirius it didn't quite meet his eyes, but his voice stayed warm. "I'd like that, Padfoot," he said softly, leaning into Sirius, whose arm was still draped across his shoulders.
"Good. Just let me pop home and change into something a little more fitting not freezing to death. You’d think if they were going to use crystal balls to predict the weather they’d be a little better at it." Sirius loosened his grip around his friend without removing his arm completely, reluctant to let go for fear that Remus would vanish into the crowd and it would be another ten years before he heard from him again.
"You always were hopeless with warming charms," Remus laughed, pulling out his wand and casually flicking it at Sirius despite the awkward angle of being so close.
Sirius was suddenly warm in a way that had nothing to do with warming charms. "Do you want to meet me somewhere?" he asked cautiously.
Remus seemed to pick up on his hesitancy, because he smiled a lot more gently and leaned a little more fully into Sirius before he carefully extricated himself. "And miss seeing how you live now that there's no one around to remind you to pick up your socks?"
"There might be a take away carton or two still on the kitchen counter." Sirius acknowledged with a chuckle.
Remus cocked an eyebrow at him. "Do you mean to say you haven't learned to feed yourself, either?"
"Why do you think I offered to buy you dinner?"
Before he could second guess himself, and with Remus' amused snort still in his ears, Sirius reached out, wrapping his arms around Remus and apparated them both into his flat, startling a couple of owls on their way in with the mail for the day.
They landed with a small pop and Remus stumbled at the unfamiliar terrain. Sirius caught him, only holding on for a moment longer than he should.
Reluctantly he slowly let go and stepped away, heading towards the bedroom. "Make yourself at home, I'll only be a minute."
Pulling the door only partway closed Sirius stripped off his robes and tossed them in a heap in the direction of the laundry pile waiting to be washed. A quick examination of his remaining clean clothes and he sighed and cast a hasty freshening charm at a deep teal dress shirt and denims that were deemed at least free of stains. He was checking his hair in the mirror while trying to convince himself that he wasn't trying to impress Remus of all people. That Remus had seen him covered in purple boils while belching orange smoke, thanks to a charm gone wrong. That there was nothing left to prove.
He had never been very good at lying to himself.
When he emerged from his bedroom he found Remus sitting on the very edge of his sagging sofa staring at the wall. His jacket was folded across his lap and he was fidgeting with the buttons, seemingly unaware that he was doing it.
"Sirius," he said softly, his voice low and rough.
Grey eyes followed Remus' gaze and settled on the large mottled blue wall opposite the hallway and the magical lunar chart that was painted there. It showed the rising and setting of the moon as well as the phases, glowing faintly as the sliver of a near dark moon started appearing in the sky and began its slow crawl across the wall.
"What's this?" Remus continued, still not looking at Sirius.
Breath caught in his throat, Sirius froze in the entranceway, unable to make his feet propel him into the room. "I would think you would recognize it, Remus," he said, going for flippant but coming across a little more strangled. Maybe bringing Remus to his flat wasn't the best idea after all.
"Sirius." This time his name was little more than a growl, and Remus finally turned, his eyes guarded, lips pressed into a thin line.
All the air that had been trapped in his lungs came out in one long whoosh, his knees only keeping him upright through determination. A heartbeat passed. Then another. Finally Sirius forced himself into the room, draping himself over the back of the sofa so that he had an excuse to break away from the way Remus' fierce gaze was holding him captive.
"I missed you," he muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
Remus propped a knee up against the back of the sofa so he could spin around and face Sirius. "Did you?" he asked quietly and a little disbelieving.
Sirius wanted to be angry. He wanted to rage at the presumption that he wouldn't; that no one would mind if Remus just disappeared. He wanted to scream that he had loved Remus all those years ago, had probably never really stopped, and why hadn’t they ever just talked about it instead of hedging around it like talking would have broken it, would have broken them. Instead he just felt tired, wrung out in a way that had nothing to do with physical limitations and more to do with the ache settling into his heart.
"You do know that I was in love with you." Sirius didn't bother to make it a question. After ten years without so much as an owl from Remus there was little he could do that could make it worse. He had learned to get by without him, barely noticing the empty space that had become a permanent part of his life, even when it threatened to engulf him.
That made Remus look away, his eyes downcast. "It's been a long time, Sirius." His voice was barely audible, hesitant in a way that Sirius had never associated with Remus before. "I thought you would be over that by now."
The words trickled cold, a poorly cast freezing charm sliding down his spine.
It took a moment before Sirius could swallow down the urge to ask if that was why Remus left, because he didn't want to face Sirius and his apparently obvious domestic impulses towards his friend. Slinking around the sofa Sirius slumped down next to Remus. "Yeah," he muttered. "I thought I would be, too." A humorless laugh escaped him before he could stop himself. "But we all know how often I was actually right, eh Moony?"
Remus didn't say anything, didn't look at him, opting instead to stare at the slowly rising moon on the wall.
The silence was oppressive, threatening to smother Sirius until he couldn't take it. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, now or then," he said softly, eyes glued to where his knuckles were turning white against his knees, gripping hard enough to leave bruises that he couldn't feel. "And I certainly didn't mean to make you run away for ten years."
A strangled little noise that Remus choked out was the only indication that he was listening at all. Finally, with a shake of his head, Remus turned to face Sirius, head cocked to the side like he was trying to puzzle Sirius out. "Is that really what you think happened?"
Sirius didn't have the energy left for this. Somehow the appearance of Remus after all these years had sapped the last little bit of will that he holidays hadn't already stolen. He fought the urge to curl into a little ball and pretend none of this was happening. Preferably with Remus at his side, but that was looking less and less possible by the second.
"I don't know, Remus. You just disappeared. One day we were all inseparable, the next no one knew what had happened to you." He bit back the I wanted to find you. I tried. The likelihood of Remus appreciating the sentiment was slim. "What else was I supposed to think? I wasn't exactly subtle back then."
The wry little smile Remus flashed, so fast Sirius wasn't sure it had happened, was equal parts resigned and indulgent. "You still aren't."
Sirius choked out a laugh. "You're probably right."
Remus scrubbed a hand over his face, looking much older than his thirty-one years. "I left because I couldn't find a job, Sirius. It had nothing to do with you, or with anyone except myself."
"And that somehow meant you couldn't owl? For a decade?"
Remus snorted. "You and James and Pete, you were the best friends a bloke could ask for, but the lot of you would have stormed the Ministry the second you found out about all the regulations that made it impossible for werewolves to find work. I didn't want that."
A deep breath. Another. Sirius knew that getting angry now wouldn't change the last ten years, and it wouldn't make this conversation any easier. "We would have helped, Remus, you have to know that."
"Of course I know that," Remus snapped, refusing to look at Sirius, instead staring resolutely at the blue plaid of the sofa. "But I couldn't risk being dependent on you lot. What would I have done when you inevitably grew tired of me, tired of supporting someone who had nothing to offer in return?"
And oh! That hadn't been what Sirius had been expecting at all. He felt the tension melt out of his shoulders, sagging back with a little sigh. "Remus. Moony, look at me?"
Hesitantly, Remus turned, his eyes guarded, wide and cautious at once.
Very slowly Sirius reached out, waiting for Remus to pull away. When he didn't, Sirius ran a finger along the edge of his jaw, noting the way Remus shivered against him even from that. "It's been ten years, Moony, and no one has ever lived up to the comparisons I tell myself I'm not making. I've been in love with the ghost of you for a very long time, and lying to myself about it hasn't really made it any less true. I would have gladly supported you for the rest of your life. It’s not as if I’ve had to earn my money." He paused long enough to let that settle into the air between them, heavy for all that it was true. “I still would, if it came to that,” he added softly.
Sirius expected Remus to argue with him, to tell him that he couldn't still love him after all these years. Maybe even tell him that he hadn't really loved him before. He expected Remus to let him down gently, but firmly.
When Remus leaned into his hand, breath stuttering, eyes falling closed, Sirius tasted his pulse at the back of his throat. "You are a very difficult man to get over," Remus whispered, so quietly that Sirius almost missed it.
"So don't. It's probably too late to go out now, and I still can't cook, but we can order take-away and talk about this and maybe give it a go?" Sirius spoke in a rush and Remus blinked hazily at him for a moment before smiling, a real smile that went all the way up to his eyes.
“We could do that,” Remus answered slowly.
“But?” Sirius asked hesitantly.
"I'd rather spend the evening snogging like a couple of teenagers," Remus replied with a wicked grin.
Sirius let out a startled bark of laughter and leaned in, watching Remus' face for any signs of reluctance. Seeing none, he pressed their mouths together, just a light brush that whited out his brain when Remus tangled his fingers into Sirius' hair and tugged.
Breaking away with a little gasp, Sirius leaned their foreheads together, sliding an arm around Remus and pulling him against his chest, feeling them breathe in tandem. He knew they should talk, that this wasn’t going to be as easy as pretending the last ten years hadn’t happened, but he was reluctant to let go now that he finally knew what the warmth of Remus against him felt like. "Both. We can do both."