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[-moonylupin-.livejournal.com]

Date: May 1st, 2000
Setting: Remus and Sirius' bathroom
Status: Private - Sirius and Remus
Summary: THE PUPPIES ARE ALIIIIVE.



It had been nearly five months since Sirius had returned from the dead.

From a miraculous, half-dreamt reunion, Remus woke with wet tears on his face the morning after, bandaged entirely and with a bustling Raphael about. He'd twisted over, blinking the tears anyway, and then seen (And why hadn't he heard the snores? They were deafening.) the emaciated form of his passionate friend.

He'd cried then, properly, and Sirius hadn't woken, and Remus had been grateful for the doctor's tact.

The next few months were quick. They'd taken a small room on the top floor, Remus' carefully saved pounds stretched immediately, and Remus took a job as a night secretary to support them both.

They'd been careful around each other - no kissing, no shagging (and they shared a bed), no questions at all, in fact. Remus trod gently, careful not to disturb their paradise, and skirted any issues of contention. They hadn't even referred to each other as Padfoot and Moony, with Prongs and Wormtail completely unspoken, since the shack. Remus was almost shy, again, unsure of what Sirius wanted, or of what Remus could give him anyway. He hadn't much. He never had much.

It had been a peaceful five months, where Sirius could work on becoming healthier and stronger, and Remus could get used to this third form of Sirius. It was a brief spell of silence and peace, this, with no questions asked and the pleasure of each other's company being all that they needed. It wasn't going to last.

He was shaving, carefully, at six that night, getting ready for his stint downstairs, and Sirius walked into the bathroom.

"I'm sorry, Sirius, I'll be right out," he told him as he carefully shaved his chin. "Almost finished."

The bathroom was small, and could only hold two people at once if they pressed up against one another. It was a cheap room, but Remus could afford nothing better. He felt a slight shame creep up him as he washed his mouth, patting his cheeks dry.

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"No hurry." As bonelessly as one could in such a defined space--and even after Azkaban and the veil, no one did boneless and gracelessly graceful quite like Sirius--he flopped onto the toilet seat and eyed him, politely and wordlessly moving his feet out of the way. Reminded of his own unkempt state by the sight of Remus's razor, he lifted his fingers distractedly to the shadow of stubble tracking across his own jaw. Sirius hadn't done much shaving the past few days. Or talking, or eating. He had found the engaging pasttime of pacing, furiously.

"Ah..." he said after a moment's pause, a pregnant, reluctant syllable. It was a grim harbinger of a sound. "Moony, what exactly... are we doing?"

"Doing" was what the words said. His voice said a dozen other things: waiting for, mostly. He shifted restlessly, a dog on the end of a chain. He was more dog than human some days, lately.

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Remus's eyes slid over to him, a reflection in the dirty mirror, as a slow, steady pull of his hand brought the razor (a straight one, it was cheaper) carefully down the length of his jaw. It slowed as he watched the man stumble, form a question.

He saw Sirius move, restlessly; Minerva had once told him, when they were young, that he'd never learn to stay still. He brought his eyes forward again, squinting at a scar crossing the line of his jaw that broke the skin there.

There was silence, in the small, cramped bathroom, as Remus rinsed his face. "I'm shaving, Sirius," he said, finally, because the man needed an answer. "And you're distracting me."

Remus didn't look at him, shoulders and stance rigid and defensive. He liked this idyll setting they'd created, flimsy as it was. He wasn't sure how much Sirius could stand knowing about him, about what he'd done to live during the dead years. Or the years before, the Azkaban years, for that matter.

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Mount Sirius (a small and scraggly foothill) underwent a minor eruption. "Oh, fuck your bloody five o'clock shadow. If it I can handle it, you can." Which wasn't in any way true, as Remus was pulling a job and some measure of respectability while Sirius paced, and thought, and paced, a pit bull on the end of a far-too-short leash. "And while you're at it you can bugger your modest but, y'know, oddly picturesque meals," he spat bitterly, "and your bloody elbow patches, and your bloody bed."

He was moving again, halfway to his feet before he was back again, and he made as if to bury his head in his hands, but let them slip away before it happened, restless on his knees. "What are we doing, Moony?" he repeated, and it was at the same time sharper and more gentle than the last.

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"Sirus," Remus said quietly. "This is all I can afford." The bitterness he witnessed in Sirius, the bitterness he watched stream out... it reminded him of Grimmauld Place, and the slow disintegration of the Sirius he knew in the screams of that portrait.

"I don't know, Sirius. At the moment I think it's whatever we want to do and neither of us know what that is." He glanced at the time. "Well, when I'm not working."

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"It's not anything I want to do," he said, a little more nastily than necessary. His fingers were twitching like he wanted a cigarette, but Sirius hadn't smoked since he was sneaking fags behind the Quidditch broom shed back in Hogwarts with the rest of the wild-haired, disenchanted teenagers born of a turbulent era who had somehow gotten the idea that smoking would ease the nerves, with the added bonus of making the smoker look really cool.

Back then, Sirius had been a sucker for appearances. He looked like a feral thing, now. Azkaban, and then the veil, had taken much.

"I... I don't know what to do, Moony," he continued, a little softer, just as angry. Frustrated. "I was--I don't know how I went from a mission--more than that, it was almost, almost--some sort of self-imposed geas, if that's possible--how do you go from that to this?" His flung-out arm took in the tiny bathroom and Remus's razor and half a year of quiet nights and cold hands and feet in a single bed. "I don't even know where we stand. Where the wizarding world stands; where we stand. I feel--you remember, in school--with Voldemort knocking on the one door and you were on the other, and I didn't know anything. Fear on one side and..." he didn't finish. He didn't need to. All the frustrated bewilderment in his face finished for him.

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"Padfoot," he started, beginning a movement with his hands, as if to grasp Sirius' shoulder and give him a hug. But he pauses and falters and stops, hands settling back against his legs. Time has dulled him to this, where he is too afraid to go further lest the spark of care that keeps him attached to this world with his mind and heart is broken. He is frightened into mildness, an old mask.

He remembered that time too well, nervous adolescence in a dark world. They were going to save it, really, defeat Voldemort in that wonderful singlemindedness and foolish bravery of the young. And they'd succeeded, not on purpose, and the cost had nearly killed them all. Two it did kill, one it twisted so that they both wished him dead, and only they were left.

And they couldn't even remember how to live.

"Sirius..." he said, quietly, watching him with wide, round eyes. "Don't. If you need to run, to do something, do it. I remember Grimmauld, too."

His mouth twisted a little. "We didn't know anything back then. I would still rather..." He couldn't bear to finish it out loud. Sirius knew the thought already.

"We should find Harry, Sirius, and a place to live, properly. I have a job here, something I won't find many other places, but I won't let you be alone either. You've spent too much time alone."