He didn't make it to his feet, but Remus was sitting on the bed anyway. He looked as though he couldn't quite piece together where he was, what he'd done, how he'd come to be there. But the unbuttoned shirt with the fraying edges told enough, as did the shaking in Remus' hands as he moved to put buttons through holes. He was either concentrating very hard on what he was doing, or concentrating very hard on not looking at Sirius.
Sirius said, "It's getting worse," though for the moment, all he could think of was the unnatural curve to Remus' fingers, still visible in the clear light of day. He was getting a headache.
Remus didn't say anything, but swung his feet down onto the floor. He looked unsteady.
"Do you want a hand?" Sirius asked. He was halfway to the bed when Remus shook his head. Remus always shook his head, like he couldn't bring himself to say no -- though he always did that, too.
"You won't let me near you," Sirius said. He sat down on the bed, but some distance from Remus.
"What do you want me to do?" Remus asked. He was still looking down at his hands, though he'd since given up on buttoning his shirt. One of the buttons was hanging by a thread.
"You don't," Sirius started, and had to stop himself from reaching out to steady Remus. He didn't know how they were going to get out of there if Remus wouldn't even allow him that -- James wasn't having any of it anymore. "You don't have to do anything," Sirius said. "You just don't understand. I didn't -- I didn't mean for it to be like this. If I'd known, I promise--"
"Sirius," Remus interrupted, his voice flat. "I don't know that your promises are worth much."
Sirius flinched. "I said I was sorry." Reminding Remus of it had done little enough before, but --
"You said that," Remus agreed.
"So why won't you forgive me?"
Remus looked at him then, sidelong, his jaw set awkwardly, like he hadn't quite adjusted to it yet. Sirius looked away.
"It's not that easy," Remus said at last.
"It's not that easy," Sirius repeated, and suddenly wanted, very badly, to hit something. He stood up and backed away from the bed -- he didn't trust himself enough not to do it. "How do you think it is for me? Remus? Do you think it's easy for me like this, too?" He reached for Remus, but stopped halfway. "Remus, I --"
"Don't," Remus said. "I don't want to have this conversation right now."
Sirius stared. His head hurt, and he could hear his pulse racing too quickly in his ears, and Remus didn't want to have this conversation right now. He wanted to yell, to ask, "then when?" because if Remus had his way, he wasn't sure that anything would ever be any different. Instead he said, "I'll help you to the infirmary."
Remus was shaky on his feet, but he twisted away when Sirius reached for him. "I don't want you," Remus said.
There was a long moment before Sirius could finally find the word, "What?"
"I don't want you to," Remus said.
"Oh," said Sirius, and he wasn't expecting it when Remus grabbed his hand. Remus' skin felt cold and clammy, and Sirius gripped back. He felt at a loss.
"I don't know that I can trust you," Remus said. He still sounded tired, always so tired.
Sirius didn't say anything.
"I don't know that I should, either."
Sirius froze. "Remus," he said, and knocked his shoulder against Remus'. He still felt too frail. "Please," he said.
"How can I?" Remus said. He was looking everywhere but at Sirius.
Sirius reached out with his free hand and touched him, softly, carefully, on the cheek. His skin was cold, and there was a faded scar just above his jaw, and the morning's stubble, but Remus didn't pull away. Sirius hadn't touched him like this in -- weeks, it must have been.
"Please," Sirius repeated. He let his hand fall. "Have a little faith. I wouldn't -- I wouldn't betray you, not like that, not again."
Remus looked up. He said, "I'll kill you if you do," but he kissed Sirius, sharp but delicate, and his mouth against Sirius' felt like forgiveness.
*
A family owl had come at breakfast, but all that was attached was a letter from a solicitor. The Prophet had reported it already, but Uncle Alphard was dead.
"I didn't do anything, Moony," Sirius said for what must have been the hundredth time since the post had arrived that morning. "At least, not yet."
"What do you mean, not yet?" Remus asked. They had finally been able to shake off James and Peter and their endless line of questioning, and got the dormitory to themselves, but it seemed that Remus was just as interested in keeping up the game of twenty questions as not.
"I mean," Sirius said, and spread the letter on the bed so as to head off further inquiry, "that my Uncle Alphard died."
Remus looked from Sirius to the parchment, and back at Sirius. "I'm sorry," he said, hesitantly. "Or is that congratulations?"
"A little of both," said Sirius. "He wasn't bad. Read the letter."
Remus plucked the letter off the bed between them and read -- his eyebrows drew together a little, and then he put it down.
"Well?" said Sirius, when Remus was finished. His palms felt sweaty.
"So you're rich again," Remus said.
"No," Sirius said, then, "well, yes," when Remus looked at him. "But that isn't the point. The point is that he left me his flat. He'd always said that he would, seeing as how I was the only one who wouldn't turn up his nose at it being in a Muggle building, and, well, he did it."
Remus reached for his hand. "I guess it is congratulations, then," he said.
"Sure," Sirius said. "But that's not really what I wanted to tell you."
"Oh?"
Sirius resettled his legs on the bed, and pushed one thigh against Remus'. Remus was warm and solid and not at all the way Sirius suddenly felt. He said, "I want you to move in with me."
Remus jerked a little bit. "What?" he said.
"Just think of it," Sirius said. He leaned closer, so he could feel Remus' breath on his cheek. "We wouldn't have to worry about James or Peter or silencing charms…"
"It seems a little premature," Remus said, but he pressed his lips against the curve of Sirius' jaw.
"We've been living together for more than six years," Sirius said. He lifted his head and found Remus' mouth with his own. "It's hardly premature," he added, a little breathlessly.
"Maybe not," said Remus. He threaded his fingers through Sirius' hair and kissed him again, all tongue, until Sirius couldn't remember what he'd been asking of him. "I think you should convince me," Remus said.
"What?"
"I think you should convince me that it's a good idea," Remus said, but Sirius couldn't concentrate on much but the taste of Remus on his tongue and the pressure of Remus' thigh against his.
"All right," Sirius said, and pushed Remus back against the pillows. Remus was grinning up at him, and pressed back when Sirius lowered his hips. "I think I ought to be able to make it worth your while."
"Can I hold you to that?" Remus said, and Sirius shuddered as Remus moved against him. He didn't think that was the sort of promise he'd have trouble keeping.
*
Alcohol agreed with Sirius, but weddings didn't, and it was probably the untimely meeting of the two that had Lily scowling at him for most of the evening. It was hardly his fault that James had been unable to stand up straight throughout the ceremony -- it wasn't as though Sirius had actually physically poured the bottle of firewhisky down James's throat. Helped him hold it, maybe. But the rest was James's doing.
On the other hand, at least James had got the good end of Lily's favour and ended up with the sobering charm -- it just figured that Sirius would have no such luck.
All this probably went a long way to explaining his insistence on dancing his way through the wedding party and the good half of the guests (and a selection from the not-so good contingent) before collapsing in a nauseous puddle on the chair beside Remus.
"You know, Padfoot," Remus said. "You've got no one to blame but yourself for getting into this kind of situation."
"What d'you mean, situation?" Sirius asked. He couldn't focus on much except Remus' glass, which soon found itself pressed into his hand and emptied into his mouth. "James invited me."
"I should hope he did," Remus said, and patted Sirius' knee in a manner that was probably supposed to be reassuring but ended up being more arousing than anything. Sirius put his head down on the table.
"I hate this," he said.
"What?" Remus asked sharply. "I thought you were having fun."
"Not this," Sirius clarified.
"Then what?" Remus said. His hand was still on Sirius' leg, and Sirius couldn't decide if he'd rather shove it off or put it somewhere more interesting.
"Weddings," Sirius said, and Remus made a noise. He could tell he wasn't making much sense, but again, that was hardly his fault. He sat up again, and rubbed his face in an attempt to reinvigorate himself. It didn't work too well. "I hate that they get to be all --" he made an indeterminate hand gesture "-- and I can't even, can't even, you know. Touch you."
"You're touching me now," Remus said, smoothing his palm against Sirius' thigh. "Or to be fair, I suppose it's the other way around."
"That isn't fair," Sirius said.
"Fine," said Remus, and removed his hand.
"I didn't say stop!" Sirius said, then slumped in his chair, tilting his head over the back of it. "Seriously, Remus, I hate that we have to be all -- proper, but James gets to snog Lily wherever and whenever he wants, like anyone wants to see that any more."
"You're drunk," Remus said.
"Of course," Sirius said. "It's fun. I just wish we could -- you know."
"There's a lav down the hallway, if that's what you're suggesting," Remus said.
Sirius knocked his shoulder. "That's not what I mean. Though -- no, that's not what I mean. I mean, soppy declarations like they did. Why can't we do that?"
Remus looked at him, grinning like he was barely containing laughter. "I love you, Sirius Black," he said.
"Shut up," Sirius said. "That's not what I meant."
"That's exactly what you meant," Remus said, and took Sirius' hand in his. "Stop being such a girl."
"I meant legally," Sirius said.
Remus rubbed his thumb over the back of Sirius' hand, making Sirius' skin prickle. "You want legal soppy declarations? I -- all right."
"You can't," Sirius said.
Remus said, "I'm no notary, but," and shrugged. He pulled a cocktail napkin off the slightly-damp stack at the centre of the table setting: it had James and Lily's initials intertwined in some elaborate design that rendered them almost unrecognizable. On the reverse he wrote, I, Remus Lupin, do swear to love you, Sirius Black, for the rest of my life. Dated this day, March 31, 1979.
He handed it to Sirius.
Sirius looked at it, then back up at Remus. He felt like he had the most idiotic grin on his face, but Remus just grinned back at him. "Thank you," he said, and pressed his mouth softly against Remus'. "But what about my life?" he asked.
"I wouldn't worry about that," Remus said, and kissed him again.
*
Sirius was still sitting on the sofa, feet on the table, glass in his hand, thinking very strongly about not being there when Remus got back, when Remus walked in the front door.
He kicked his feet onto the floor, but it wasn't just the sudden rebalancing that made his world tilt. And it wasn't the glass in his hand or the alcohol in his veins -- though if he remembered anything about basic anatomy, he was certain that ought to help.
Remus said, "You going somewhere?" and somehow it hadn't even occurred to Sirius that he would know. There was his stuff in the front hallway and it was Sirius' job, but between the moment that Sirius got the letter and he started throwing shit into bags, and the moment that Remus had stepped back into the flat and Sirius actually had to face him, Sirius had managed to avoid realising that he was in fact leaving Remus, and Remus would, in fact, know.
Sirius straightened a bit, and flinched when Remus sat down beside him. He didn't have to look to know that Remus looked drawn, haggard, exhausted. He also didn't have to look to remember the yellow in Remus' irises or the curvature of his hands -- or the way that Moody had written, "You are no longer safe in that flat." And he didn't have to look to know that Remus knew.
"Where were you?" Sirius asked instead.
"Oh," Remus said, as though he'd genuinely expected a response to his own question. "Just another one of Dumbledore's plans. You know how pointless those things are."
Sirius grunted, and handed the half-empty glass to Remus when he reached. He didn't point out that it was the Muggle stuff that Remus didn't like; Remus drank it down anyway, and put the glass back in Sirius' open palm. Sirius curled his fingers around the base.
"I had a letter today," he said, quickly. "They're suspecting a leak -- someone from the inside."
When Remus said nothing, Sirius refilled the glass, and took a long drink. He was beginning to hate whisky.
"Someone," Sirius started, a little more uncertainly now. He didn't know how to phrase it, when it had been so perfectly expressed in the letter. But -- "Someone is telling them about James and Lily and the -- about Harry."
Remus swore. "I've been saying it for months, now," he said.
"I know," said Sirius, and fixed a look on the pages scattered over the table. It was all in there. There was no need for Remus to remind him what he'd been saying and not saying, when Sirius had had no choice but to listen, and to remember.
"Lily said --" Remus started, but either got the hint or changed his mind, and said, "Did Dumbledore say who it is that he suspects?"
Sirius bit his tongue and took a sip, letting the whisky wash over his palate before he forced himself to swallow. It tasted sour, but not pleasantly so. "No," he said. He couldn't think of what else to say. It wasn't as though it had been Dumbledore, anyway.
"No," Remus said, "I suppose he wouldn't, would he." Then he turned and touched Sirius' shoulder, softly, with only a whisper of his fingers. "Where's Mad Eye sending you off to now, anyway? Anywhere I'm allowed to know about?"
"Of course not," Sirius said, and deliberately set down his glass, now empty. He hadn't meant -- "It's top secret. That is, of course. Just the way Moody likes it, yeah?"
"Of course," Remus repeated, and Sirius could almost hear the smile in his voice. They'd had this conversation before -- or maybe not this one, but one close enough to amount to the same. It wasn't the words that were the problem.
"To be perfectly honest," Sirius said, "I'm not even sure where I'm going, myself."
But that was new.
"What about when you're coming back, at least?"
Sirius shook his head, and tried to return that smile. "Don't know that I am," he said, but all he could hear was Moody's warning, which had been as good an answer as any.
"Hm," Remus said, and his fingers pressed a little more insistently against Sirius' shoulder. "I guess we ought to make the most of it, then. Since tonight might be the last one together."
Sirius looked at him. He had spent so much time studiously ignoring Remus that it was almost a surprise to see Remus smiling at him. It made his throat hurt.
"I suppose so," Sirius said, but when he leaned over and kissed Remus, all he could feel was the sudden painful battering of his heart, beating too hard and too fast for his chest. It was one thing to know -- but it was something else to have to do it, to kiss Remus and pull at his clothes and press their bodies close together the way they used to, but to do knowing that it was their last, and that it was by no choice of Sirius'.
"This is wrong," Sirius murmured, opening his mouth against Remus'. But Remus was already pushing at him, shoving away clothes and exposing skin, and even in his most rational moments, Sirius had never been able to stop Remus from anything.
They did it messily on the sofa, with Remus' face buried against Sirius' neck, his lips pressing damply against the hollow of Sirius' throat, gasping senseless words that might once have been love -- and Sirius jerked them both, inelegantly, inexpertly, and thought about nothing. It almost made it easy, when he came, to murmur the words against Remus' ear that might have already lost all truthfulness.
But there was no time for anything else.
When Sirius had cleaned up, Remus was still lying on the sofa, tucked away but still unbuttoned, unkempt, unabashed, but the look he fixed on Sirius said something else. Sirius swallowed. He didn't want this.
"I can't stay," he said, but for one long crazy moment he thought about kissing Remus again, the way he used to, until he couldn't think and couldn't breathe and couldn't taste anything but shared saliva and something that might have been the sum of both their hearts. Instead he said, "I've got to leave tonight," though he was hardly certain who he was trying to convince.
"All right," Remus said, and sat up a little, resting his weight on his elbow. He kept a steady gaze on Sirius, and reached his free hand to touch Sirius' thigh, just above the knee. Sirius was grateful that he couldn't reach much else from such a distance. "I suppose I'll see you when you get back," Remus said, after a pause.
"Yes," Sirius said, quickly enough that, to his own ears, it might as well have been no. "I'll see you," he repeated.
If he could just make it down to street level, he was certain he would be able to stop having second thoughts.
*
"I don't know what you want me to say," Sirius said, for what felt like the fiftieth time. The carefully constructed reasoning that he'd spent weeks, months, years piecing together, after he left, in Azkaban, on the run, in a cave -- it had all fallen down the very moment that Dumbledore had sent him back to Remus. There were no more arguments left to make.
"I just want to understand," Remus said.
"What do you--"
"You thought that I was spying on you," Remus said simply.
"And you thought--"
"No," Remus interrupted. He didn't look angry anymore, as he had done the middle dozen times, after his pity and concern had worn off to reveal twelve years of resentment that certainly, Sirius deserved. He just looked tired. "Dumbledore did. Lily told me, but I told her that -- it doesn't matter. I didn't believe it, Sirius. And I -- you did."
"There were reasons," Sirius said. And even now he could see them, printed in the Prophet's pages, listed in Moody's flattened scrawl, whispered in Peter's voice. But he didn't know how to explain circumstances more than twelve years past -- not when so much had been lost to Azkaban. He looked at his hands. He still didn't know what Remus wanted him to say.
"Of course there were reasons!" Remus said, and put his teacup down hard enough that the table clattered. "There was a file on you, too, Sirius. The difference --"
Remus broke off, and Sirius looked at him. Remus was staring back at him, as though seeing him for the first time, as though only now taking in twelve years of changes, as though realising at last that Sirius was not, in fact, worthy of even sitting at this table.
Sirius put his hands in his lap.
"The difference," Remus said at last, "is that I chose to believe you when you promised not to betray me again." He was almost smiling, but Sirius could detect the edge of hysteria in it.
"Don't think I didn't--"
"I don't think you didn't," Remus said, over him. "But I don't think I realised how useless it was to put faith in something so, so short as young love."
Sirius kept looking at him. He didn't feel that he was breathing quite right. He didn't feel that he was doing anything quite right.
"Is that all it was?" he asked.
Remus stood up, but he kept his eyes level on Sirius. "It was," he said, and Sirius felt a familiar weight settling back on his heart. He didn't want to blame Remus. But he wondered if Remus really thought he was helping.
Remus took his cup from him and put it in the sink, where there was a charmed brush waiting to wash the dishes. Sirius stayed seated: he didn't know what else there was to do.
"Sirius," Remus said. "That isn't what it is now."
"I know," Sirius said. But there was an ache in his throat told him that that still didn't explain enough, or even anything.
*
Remus was hot and hard against him, pushing insistently and reminding Sirius of long afternoons in bed at home, back before Azkaban, before everything. Remus' body had changed, was lean now in places that it hadn't been, was long and curved in ways that Sirius hadn't known, but his mouth was the same, insistent and clever and Sirius could almost imagine that Remus had never really stopped loving him.
There was nothing careful about the sex -- no concern that someone might walk in, or they might wake someone up, or they might fall off the sofa. It was needy and fast and Sirius could hardly breathe for it, for remembering and learning anew the ways Remus' hands, his tongue, his hips worked.
"I don't want to lose you again," Sirius whispered, once his heart had stilled and Remus was calm against him.
"Then don't leave me," Remus said. His skin was hot on Sirius' back, and Sirius could feel the beating of his heart against his spine. "That's the only way you've ever lost me."
"I won't," Sirius said. "Not again. I promise."
"Never is a long time for a promise," Remus murmured. His breath was warm and familiar against the back of Sirius' neck, and Sirius could almost forget that this was Grimmauld Place and not home. He wasn't sure that there would ever be any difference, now.
"Maybe," said Sirius, and let out a long, grateful breath from within the circle of Remus' arms. "But it gives me plenty of time to keep it."
But Remus was smiling, and Sirius knew he'd let him try.