Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine.

Notes: Dedicated to crazycelebrian, whose fanmixes are awesome and heartbreaking.

In Quiet Dusk, My Heart Will Stop Wanting

He was making coffee again, his twelfth cup that day and at three in the morning – coffee he would take dark and scalding, without the honey and milk he had always loved, that Sirius had adored kissing off his lips, his tongue greedy as it licked through Remus' mouth, leaving the both of them breathless and wide awake, a drug more potent than caffeine. But Remus took his coffee bitter now, black and unforgiving, even as it caused his eyes to water, his taste buds to protest against that aftertaste of hurt and regret. Sirius watched as Remus stared blindly into his cup, and he stepped up behind his lover, daring that liquid mirror to reflect what the eye cannot see. But the surface remained still, disturbed only by quick ripples as Remus turned to replace the cup in the sink, to blink away the tears that came unannounced, unwelcomed guests that they have been of late. Remus left the kitchen then, passing through the man who reached hopelessly forward to brush shaking fingers against wet cheeks, and turned off the light, throwing the room and a waiting love into a darkness that settled like bleeding ink.

Death, Sirius Black thought, was a real bitch. It was half-hearted and impatient – a changeling in the woods, destructively beautiful as it lured one from safety and into emeralds and greens, and then vanishing as it changed its mind, leaving one stranded in this impossible quiet, this world removed and waiting on the margins of life. It has left him here, the particles that held up his ghostly being hurting enough to tear him asunder, his immaterial body in a flame of obsidian and secretive gold where Remus had walked right through. He was still waiting for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune1 to stop finding home, and it was all he could do to hold those whispering molecules of himself together, to not scatter in a breath to coat Remus in indigo stardust, ending the terrible beauty of this in-between. This cannot be Death, because his heart should not hurt when it has ceased to beat – it should not desire, it should not want. But Death was only truly a double of life – a doppelganger that remembered the pull of the earth, even as it forced him to float weightless above it, condemned to wait and to want that which is no longer his.

A year since he had fallen through the veil, and it was still a cacophony in his head, an endless riot of wheres and hows. It was not that he did not understand that he was dead – that realization had been quick to take him, and painless when it did, for Death was but a poor distraction from the knowledge that it would not be his Moony's arms that would catch him on the other side. Now he was here, although gods and angels be damned if he knew where here was. James would only tell him that they were waiting, that they could not be ready yet, and had pulled Sirius into a hug before the Black could even growl in frustration. James' touch was an unreasonable talisman against this insanity, and Sirius had only been too willing to disappear into his brother, to close his eyes as their outlines blurred and dissolved into each other, cloaks of azure grey and deep hazel soon indistinct.

"Patience, Padfoot," James would murmur, who knew him well enough to read the disquiet he could not articulate, their sixteen years apart mere numerology and semantics. He would like to feign ignorance, to quote confusion as to what, and to whom, he should be patient for, but the words always died on his lips before they could become lies. He had never been any good at waiting, at relearning etiquette necessary for affairs in Death, to not take what he was inclined, hopelessly, to desire. There was no Time here in this lingering between worlds, but Sirius was certain he had at least lasted a week of self-enforced passivity, passing his immortality in idleness, contemplating if the auroras that often danced above Hogwarts in the summer were souls unable to depart, waiting for the one they could not be without. But yet, he could not, in good conscience, claim that he had really tried, for he was here in the dark, in the kitchen in Grimmauld Place, trying to remember that he was already dead, and that the sting in his eyes could not be tears.

He was haunting Remus, a plan that had no other virtues but for the simple fact that it was what he wanted. Sirius did not know what this clever scheme of his would lead to, or even what he wished it would amount to – he would freely admit that he did not think, that his body was solely governed by the need to be near Remus, and to hell, if he should even be using that word, with consequence and logic. He had all but become Remus' shadow in the last few months – an afterthought to his daily activities, a post-script to the many letters he volunteered to write for the Order, and late at night, the air he breathed while the world slept and he watched the dogstar, lying still in their unmade bed. And soon, Sirius began to glow with residues of sorrel gold particles, that clung to his essence of silver and indigo, impossible to mistake even if he could not see them. Those aureate streaks smouldered a deep amber in the nights he spent with Remus, trailing fingers against cold cheeks, his heart aching enough to break as he willed his namesake to burn brighter for this man he loved, this man barely alive in his grief. If James was concerned about Sirius' disappearances, he did not show it, quiet in his knowledge as his friends shimmered as one in bleeding shades of sable and saffron in the winking starlight.

And then, without warning, everything ended on a rainy afternoon. It was a day of Order meetings for Remus, who was unmoving in his seat as rain whipped tree branches against the grimy kitchen windows, his fists clenching and unclenching under the table as Sirius' favourite weather thundered overhead. Sirius leaned against the counters, his form more pronounced in the strange static of that flashing darkness, causing more than one Order member to rub their weary eyes as they questioned their sanity. Remus excused himself as soon as the meeting ended, hoarsely offering inaudible excuses that nobody questioned, their eyes averted in pity as they gathered cloaks and scarves for disapparation. Sirius was left alone then, in the gathering storm, unwilling and unable to follow Remus for the certain loathing of his own helplessness. That was when he saw the horoscope, the crying wind flipping the pages of the Daily Prophet open – a fluke, a message, a warning. He did not understand why, but he obeyed that pull of random magic, reading his stars even though the only cosmic he believed in was the fire of constellations as gases burnt and consumed themselves whole.

It is time to act against your natural character and inclination. You need to display all the qualities you don't believe you have. With the right changes, you'll attract the luck you need when it means the most.

Cryptic words that should not have meant anything, that he should have been able to dismiss without feeling as though he had been caught fast in a gale, the air knocked from his lungs. But damnit, he was his own enemy, and it did not take long for those words to become taunting echoes in his head, accusing him of what he had long feared to be true. In those endless nights as he knelt by Remus' bedside, focusing all his energies on keeping his hands stable as they flickered and gleamed – what if those hands held more than just strands of Remus' hair, the gaunt hollow of his face? What if it had been him who was holding Remus back from life, his ghostly presence registering in the deep of Remus' lupine subconscious, inciting Moony to run after the hiding Padfoot, to seek his scent and the low purr of his whine? He was being selfish, and maybe it was time indeed to act against those naturally destructive inclinations, and put Remus' living before his own death. When Sirius finally disappeared, in the kitchen under the bedroom in which his memory still breathed, the hurt that had gone through him had been like ribbons of quicksilver in wolf blood, turning the world before his eyes into an unbearable myriad of scarlet and crimson.

What Sirius could not know was that Remus read that horoscope too, and that alignment of stars and fortunes that was not his had spoken to the werewolf regardless, setting into motion a chain of events that could only script one ending. Remus Lupin was a man who obeyed the basic fundamentals of logic. He understood both the laws of nature and the mechanics of life, and has never been tempted, until this hunger of fury and longing, to resist who he was. He had always been a survivor, a wolf able to withstand the ravages of winter, a marauder able to overcome his own history. But yet, of late, all he could think about was the price of unbecoming, of undoing himself till nothing remained, till the impossible could once again be obtained. Destructiveness was an easy trick to master, a sleight of hand and heart, and he wondered why it had taken him so long, when he had always loved the wicked burn in Sirius' eyes, the telltale fingerprint of recklessness and abandon. He convinced Dumbledore to send him to the other werewolves, where he waited, and dared, Death to find him, looking the invisible straight in the eye.

Remus' decision to heed that horoscope made Sirius' oath of passivity an impossible one to keep, and Sirius equally impossible company as he cursed and stormed, promising creative litanies of violence for those still alive, those blind to Remus' burgeoning darkness, his aura a concoction of perse and ebony, beauty terrifying in its ferocity. Sirius Black hated being wrong, but when it came to himself, he was always flawed in his judgement. He did not consider that his haunting of Remus could be borne out of love, rather than the cavalier selfishness he associated freely with his own name – his essence could tear before his eyes, indigo whispers of Remus' name even in the last, and he would not have been moved from his own unkindness. It was trite, but James was suddenly fearful that Sirius could not survive Remus' death, if the end should indeed come as the werewolf courted it.

However, something else happened, and this story that Moony had been determined to rewrite was put on hold, the ink glistening as it refused to dry, a warning that this lull would only be temporary. Padfoot and Prongs watched as bravery disguised in pink hair and an upturned nose attempted to save a man whose salvation could not be with her, whose heart had long been claimed, paw prints and barking laughter tracking the length of it. Sirius had never been quieter than in those months, his face unreadable as he continued to stay with Remus, his usually quick eyes an unchanging shade of obsidian that would tolerate no light in them. The only touch he allowed in those months was James' arm around his shoulder, a gesture that needed no words, that wanted no part of himself that he couldn't give. Soon, Sirius forgot he had even read that horoscope, as he concentrated on staying a step ahead of his emotions, and like all forgotten magic, the stars gathered in the dark, and bid their time to bring to fulfilment what they have promised these two men, strangers in seperation but lovers otherwise, whose lives have been irreparably changed by their words.

On the evening that it was set to happen, just as the sun was fleeing the skies, both Sirius and Remus had immediately known. It was a certainty that gripped the pair at the same time, that quickly settled like shadows, a charm of unspeakable weight against fear and regret. The walk to his death had been short, and he had instinctively picked out Dolohov – Dolohov, who blocked the way to Voldermort, who was the strongest and the surest on those grounds that evening. He had never intended to go down without a fight, knowing now that his brothers were watching him, and he had duelled, all the fiercer because he knew it was near. He had just put up the shield charm when he heard Tonks scream his name, understanding and denial raw in her shriek. And then the shield had broken, a charm that had never failed him before, and the luck he had been hoping to attract had found him in that moment which meant most. He wanted to apologize to Tonks as he watched that green light snake towards him, but then he was gone, and it was dusk, the skies empty for the first time in the day as both the sun and the moon prepared for a new beginning.

He heard Sirius before he saw him, and as soon as he blinked away the pale promise of the horizon, he was in Sirius' arms, salt light on his tongue as he laughed and he cried, whispering Sirius Sirius Sirius. "You silly mutt," Sirius had murmured, his voice breaking as he traced trembling fingers along Remus' jaw, and then they were kissing, the salt changing the way they had tasted to each other, and time enough in this forever to relearn each other again, their souls home where they have never left.

- Fin -

1. Shakespeare, Hamlet.