Title: Steadying up on us.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius.
Disclaimer: I wish.
Summary: Two mini-fics. The first, how they came together and the second, the reason they fell apart.

I promise you a heart you'd promise to keep.
"I've never been in love before --" Remus was halfway through admitting when Sirius's back hit the trim of his bed, all gentle curves and sharp elbows. He coughed, almost politely, and knotted his fingers together over the dusty cover of his book, "I don't think it necessarily matters much, but I would like to experience it sometime before I die."

"All it does is fuck you around!" James had grinned and Peter had edged in something about it being for ponces, anyway. Or girls. And there had been an uncomfortable silence then neither of them dared try explain.

"But all the same -" Remus had admitted later, behind thick red drapes to a whisper of moonlight and Sirius's gentle snores, "I would like it anyway."

It was well past Valentines when the conversation was brought up again, and it was just the two of them. Him and Sirius, pushed up together on a couch in the common room. They'd moved along, shuffled hips to hips, to make room for some third years with tears in their eyes. Once they left, once they were dragged off to bed, they just hadn't considered it. And the static from the fire accentuated the way their knuckles rested just near enough to touch if they tilted their wrists in the right direction.

"I've never been in love either --" Sirius said, all of a sudden, before looking down and pressing his lips into a firm line, "Well, not in the way you're supposed to. It's always been the wrong type or the wrong person. Mainly it's just been me. But I think I'd like it too, some day."

Remus's mind had added the "with you" on the end and it made his chest rise in such a harsh breath he felt a shock of cold air hit the back of his tongue a moment later, almost making him forget it was make believe.

"But not yet." Remus had smiled, "Not now."

Siirus laughed then but didn't dare look at him, "Of course not. That'd make us no better than James and Evans. Fucking idiots."

He didn't know why, but Remus, for some reason, whenever they talked about it from then on always assumed they would be falling in love with each other. Even if Sirius had said nothing of the sort. It wasn't hope, exactly, but something like it. So when he saw Sirius's kisses pressed timidly to Emilia Harkshaw's neck, he winced They're supposed to be for me, and didn't bring it up again.

"Do you think anyone can really keep a heart?" he asked James, two weeks later, "So many muggle songs talk about it but I consider them rather too free. Or too open."

"Wouldn't be able to survive without them, mate, so maybe just have a temporary philosophical hold?"

Dark eyes twinkled mischeviously from behind thin frames and the end of a quill disappeared behind his teeth. But Remus nodded, nonetheless, shuffling his feet along the floor until the rug started to curl with him.

"That's like keeping a word, owning a word, I give you my H-E-A-R-T, how is that romantic? They're just letters."

James never answered but, surreptisiously, later, when they were all asleep, he added an 'e' in a note to Lily. Secretly thanking Remus's obsession with all of this love stuff for letting him look less like an idiot than usual.

"I don't see what the big deal is -" he told Sirius the next morning over breakfast, "If you love someone, you love them. You shouldn't have all of this mumbo-bloody-jumbo about keeping them. Of course you get to, it's what love implies."

Sirius shook his head, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of bacon rind before speaking quietly, almost under his breath.

"Me neither -" he shrugged, "Mumbo Jumbo. Who gives a shit about it anyway, right?"

But when he found Remus outside the Charms classroom that afternoon, he grimaced, taking him aside as they walked; whispering carefully in his ear.

"I know exactly what you mean."

And that's how it happened, well, part of it. The cardboard heart with the jagged edges and the too large loop at the bottom. It curved, rather than ran to a point, but when Remus woke up to it on his pillow, he couldn't help but smile helplessly, anyway.

'A heart you can keep' it said, in thick red marker.

It wasn't signed but from the way Sirius's lips pressed against his that night, he didn't think he needed to ask.

You are the only person who's completely certain there's nothing here.
For all they were fighting, Remus wondered sometimes if they all knew it would be worth it. Not that he doubted the reasons, or the people, but whether things would be different if it swung the other way. He'd seen the faces, of course he had, the hopelessness mixed with desperation in tired eyes. Sullenly, all sitting sullenly over shots of whisky and month long beards. He never joined in but he watched, and maybe that's why it hurt so much.

Sirius, their shoulders nudged together, crouched in an old apartment that neither of them had wanted. Protection, they had to pretend. And it dragged them both into a whirlwind of self-destruction when they were alone.

Remus often asked, head bowed against his fraying jumper, "Do you think we'll make it out of this?" and the silence of the pillow next to him made his heart jump like a bullet into the back of his throat. He didn't like to say no, but it resonated, echoed, quite clearly at the back of his mind. I already think we're in too deep, even if we win.

He had enough scars anyway. They always told him that. Enough to last a lifetime but it had been an easy decision for him - to wait out his transformations until life took over and eventually, selfishly, killed him. Or to throw himself into something worth it and go out with a bang.

It was cold - frosty, thick white icicles hanging from the mouth of the cave when he arrived, settling down with a blanket and watching as everything slowed down to shadows on the floor. He liked to imagine then.

Sirius arrived, eventually, his skin greying just like the rest as he slunk down beside him.

"I've been feeling -" he whispered and Remus turned to look at him, turned away from the apparent 'suspicious activity' for barely a minute, "-- that perhaps I'm the only one who isn't going to be driven insane by this."

They both paused and Remus chewed dryly on his bottom lip.

"Why?"

He hadn't even meant to ask. In his head, he heard Sirius laughing. The way he used to with his head thrown back and his chest shaking. Instead, he was met with silence, and it was still taking some getting used to. But they were all different now. They were grown up. The backbones of men trying to be boys. They weren't made for any of this at all.

"Why?" Sirius asked, and he snorted, "It's not --" he took a deep breath and pulled his knees up to his chest, "..no matter how much we argue it or how terrible we know it is, so long as there is distinctly a good side and a bad side we'll be okay. But once more people get killed, the ones we love, it's going to blur - and I think a lot of us will become monsters."

Remus thought about that for a moment but didn't say anything. He didn't know what he could say, as awkward as he always got around serious conversation, there was something different about the way his hands shook as they clung tightly onto his thighs.

"A lot is going to be taken from us," Sirius continuted distantly, "And I don't know how many of us are strong enough to fight it. To be tempted -" he hissed, "because it's easier. Everyone has a dark side and a light side. Things like this tend to bring out the worst and I'm trying to make damn sure there's more than just me who knows what they're fighting for."

"Survival?"

Their knees almost brushed. He shook his head, then stopped, shrugging himself back against the wall instead.

"Maybe. But there's no way in hell my reason is going to be the same as theirs. As far as I'm concerned, Black means murderer. They taught me that -- and I'm not going back to it, Remus. Never."