Solace
Moony was shivering. That wasn't good. He'd come in from the rain to Grimmauld Place, not the best place for keeping warm if you were already soaked. The house was well built and it kept out the cold, but each Dark artifact chilled the house a minute fraction of a degree and with all the artifacts added up, snowballs might have a chance of surviving hell if they were wrapped up in this house.
Which was just a roundabout way of saying that Sirius was worried. He padded over to where Remus had collapsed onto the sofa and turned into Padfoot. Whining softly, he jumped up on Remus's right side and rested his head contemplatively on Remus's wet thigh. He looked up at Remus and smelled exhaustion and cold, and so he put a paw over Remus's thigh too for good measure. He did the Padfoot equivalent of a purr by vibrating with pleasure once Remus's chilled left hand entwined itself in his coat, and willed himself to generate more heat. All this while, Remus shivered. Shivered more than Padfoot vibrated. No, this wasn't good at all.
"Remus?" Sirius slowly turned back to human self and extricated his hand reluctantly from his friend's lap. His head, he made sure to lift before transformation. He grabbed his friend's bicep and pulled him to the kitchen and pushed him onto a chair before pulling out a kettle and starting water boiling for tea. "What happened to you?"
A long moment of silence was followed with, "Nothing. I'm fine." Sirius raised his eyebrows to himself and magically sped up the tea-making process. Remus preferred his tea the Muggle way- better flavor- but boiled water was boiled water, and within a minute they were sitting across the counter from each other with probably-clean cups of questionable origin. Remus shivered less with every sip of his tea. Remus had produced a handful of chocolates from one of the cupboards, which seemed to turn him less grey if still somewhat pale, and somewhere in their heads it made sense that Remus knew the Grimmauld kitchen better than Sirius did. The tea and chocolate may have exorcized the grey, but tired eyes gazed thoughtfully at a spot on the wall and it pissed Sirius off that Remus couldn't tell him what the bloody hell was wrong anyway.
Sirius frowned at the countertop and slipped into Padfoot again. He hated being human. Most of the time, it was just too much work and he didn't work unless he had to. Padfoot was simple, and Moony loved Padfoot. Padfoot conveyed his unhappiness quite effectively by helping himself- or a significant portion of himself- onto Remus's lap and refusing to move. Luckily, the previous great Blacks had been considerate enough to furnish even the counter with the sort of sturdy bench that a dog could jump on.
"Pads," Remus said with the sort of infinite patience you show a small child, "you're rather heavy to be sitting on my lap." Padfoot just whined.
"I'm also not going to talk to you just because you sit on my lap and refuse to move. This is quite endearing, but I am tired and ready for bed."
Happily for Sirius, Remus could never keep his hands off Padfoot very long and he licked Remus's hand when it came down to tease his fur. Remus had long fingers that just begged to get tangled in his hair. Remus today tasted like rain, something metallic, chocolate, and sweat. That and just enough of something that always said Remus, comfort and distance and sadness all at once. Chocolate kills dogs, James told him laughing, but Padfoot never ate any chocolate beyond what he found on people's fingers and he figures he's in more danger from all the ice cream his friends fed him in dog form than chocolate anyway. So Remus's calloused knuckles were in his shaggy black hair and the water from the soaked cloak was seeping into his belly. Reluctantly, Padfoot slid off Remus's lap once the majority of the chocolate was gone and tugged the hem of his friend's robe toward the door.
"Padfoot." Remus was trying for disapproving, but his voice was too tired. And that tiredness pissed Sirius off too. Padfoot, not so much. But Sirius was pissed off and so Padfoot was this close to growling while he herded Remus to the second bedroom upstairs. He jumped up onto Remus's bed before changing back to Sirius and informing Remus why they had dragged themselves up the stairs.
"You need dry clothes."
Remus stared. "If I find teeth marks on my robes, your hair is going to stay bright green until I am convinced you're sorry." Sirius wanted to change back into Padfoot, but settled for looking miserable on the edge of the bed, watching Remus hang up wet layers. "Fine." Remus's scars were stark white against his skin, always more ridged in the cold than any other time. Lean muscle shifted under deceptively fragile skin, soon completely exposed but for a pair of faded boxers.
"And what is it today with you anyway?" Shit. Remus was scrutinizing him and he was still unabashedly ogling Remus. He hunched his shoulders and met glowered back. "You're behaving like a child, Sirius. And I don't have the energy to deal with you. So please, go outside and take a walk. If you have something to say to me, don't shut yourself up in Padfoot and stay in my space like your life depends on it. Just tell me so we can deal with it."
Sirius had nothing to say to that, but he couldn't leave. He kicked at the chair sitting within his reach instead.
"Honestly, Sirius. I don't know what the hell goes through your head." Sirius looked up to find Remus standing above him, arms crossed. He visually traced the veins in Remus's forearms and knew he probably looked like a sulky child. The hell. He let himself pout and look miserable. Remus must know what the hell was even going on. Because he sure as hell didn't. Remus always knew, right? Sirius just wanted to be close to his friend, and with every push in the opposite direction his mood turned fouler until he was in this full-fledged pout.
The weight of Moony nearly straddling him as he rested one knee beside him on the mattress was electrifying. The feeling of Moony's hand on his jaw tilting his face upwards was fucking divine. And the feel of cool lips burning across the corner of his mouth, that must not even have a name. He clutched at Moony's back desperately, automatically and opened his mouth for more. And felt Moony push away.
"I can't mother you tonight, Sirius. Another night, I might have given you that. Any other night, I might have tried. But don't ask that of me tonight because I'm tired and it's too much to ask of a tired person."
Sirius looked at Remus's voice box feeling shell-shocked. But I have things to give; I never asked for mothering; I wanted to keep you safe. What I asked for isn't what you want to give. But none of this mattered to a now-dressed Remus in flannels and a dressing gown pulling blankets around his shoulders. So when Sirius curled up at the foot of the bed in a ball with a towel for a pillow, not sure whether he was dog or human when he closed his eyes, Remus just snorted and got under the covers with a Sirius-or-Padfoot bed warmer at his feet.
That was how Remus woke up suffocating at 6 AM the next morning. Padfoot had somehow managed to place half his mass on Remus's left side, with a drooly mouth chewing absently on his pajama pocket. His first instinct to curse Sirius human and then hex him was easily quashed. His second, to roll Padfoot off the bed entirely and go back to sleep, was harder to ignore.
"Pads."
Padfoot grunted. Remus tried to lift his knee.
"Pads."
Two pairs of sleepy eyes glared at each other.
"You're heavy," Remus informed the dog, "and you have dog breath."
Padfoot seemed to think this over for three seconds before he scrambled off the bed clumsily and somewhere in the house started the sound of running water.
Improvement number one: Sirius was (most probably) human again. If he were still canine, Remus had a valid reason to complain: wet dogs smelled bad. Remus groaned into his pillow. That dog was driving him off the wall. So he got up too, showered in under forty seconds and decided to start coffee and toast. After laundry, that is. His shirt smelled like dog breath.
"Dogs."
By the time Remus had finished a slice of toast, Sirius had walked down the stairs fully human and clean.
"Do things look better in the morning, Pads? Because if you're not on the verge of cracking, I have yelling rights all morning for that shedding and drooling you did on my bed."
"Good, that's only an hour and a half of yelling to listen to. We overslept."
"I wonder why."
Remus looked at Padfoot wryly.
"If I may ask, why did you take it upon yourself to stick to my side all yesterday night in dog form?"
"You looked sick."
"And you were worried? I'm touched."
"But you looked sick!"
"Very complimentary, I'm sure."
"Aren't I allowed to worry about you?"
Remus breathed in.
"Sirius, what do you want?"
Sirius put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the ground. So much for nerve. Remus exhaled and pushed a mug of coffee across the table.
"I don't want to be your parent, Sirius. Please remember that you own a bed. Multiple beds, in fact, aside from mine should you tire of yours."
"I don't want a parent. I wanted you."
"We're not the same any more. I can't even see who you are for who you aren't, and I wouldn't leave you for the world but I don't want you to be my whole life."
"Sirius, don't take this the wrong way. I love you. And I think you're an attractive man. But being with you every hour of the time I spend at home is like sitting in a pool of weak acid."
Remus looked away, troubled.
Sirius gripped the kitchen counter with a splintering strength in his left hand. Remus looked sorry, then he left the house through the Floo.
It was that evening that Sirius got word of Harry being in the Ministry of Magic with Voldemort at his tail. With the vision of Moony's deadly silence at his heels, Sirius too left his home for good.
The Unhappy End.
I honestly don't know what came over me. This used to be, believe it or not, a meaningless piece of fluff, and then I was going to let them have sex and they WOULDN'T. And then it gave itself its own timeline. Two hyper-intelligent and damaged people trying to recapture the past has never worked in real life and it wasn't gonna happen in anything I touched, apparently. I'm sorry if this is complete junk, but it's been sitting around for a few months on my computer and I still don't know what to think of it.