In the window's reflection, he sees someone he should know but no longer cares enough to. He ignores them, ignores their aura of sympathy and caring, and stares blankly out into the grey London drizzle.
Footsteps join the reflection. "He's doing it again."
A sigh, exasperated yet remorseful. "He can't keep this up."
"Bugger him, I can't keep this up."
Silence. The voices retreat. He pays no attention, preferring instead to let the apathy consume him. Apathy is preferable to what he would feel since… since… His thoughts skitter away from completing the sentence, even in his mind, like a rabbit fleeing in terror from a wolf under a full moon.
He's always been quiet, introspective, but now the introspection is merely habit, a façade covering the gaping wound of his loss. Inside he's floundering, drowning. He's lost the one sure point of his unsure existence. He doesn't know how to go on, let alone if he even wants to.
Unnoticed, a solitary tear emerges, gleaming dully in the fitful grey light. Caressingly, it traverses the bleak planes of his face, and drops with finality into his cold cup of tea.
...
He wakes with a start in the night, sure he felt someone just leave the bed, and reaches for the accustomed warmth at his side. Too late he remembers. His defences aren't up, and the agony sets in. He curls up on his side, head in his arms. His body wracked with grief, he cries, intense, physically draining sobs which exhaust him but don't give him emotional release. He doesn't hear the door open, doesn't feel the weight of a slight body sitting next to him on the mattress.
"Shhhh, shhhhh."
The voice whispers meaningless comforts while a hand rubs warm circles on his back.
He tries to stifle his sobs but ends up keening his grief into the cold dark room. He feels the hand withdraw, grabs for it, and turns into the body seeking comfort as if he were a puppy blindly seeking milk. The body stiffens, then relaxes. Arms encircle his shaking shoulders. A hand strokes his hair. His tears soak the cotton beneath him, but slowly, gradually, the agony quietens and he drops into an uneasy sleep.
When he wakes in the morning the comfort is gone and there's not even the memory of warmth in the bed beside him.
...
Days pass, endless grey days, as grey as the dismal London weather outside, as grey as a wolf's coat on its solitary nocturnal expeditions. He refuses to acknowledge the days, refuses to resist the grey seeping into his heart and mind and existence. He welcomes it. Grey is what he feels, grey is how he should feel. There can be no colour in his life, not since his Sun has died. He lets the grey envelop him and welcomes its numb cocooning embrace.
...
"There's a Muggle saying."
He ignores the voice, since it is not the one voice he wants to hear.
"It's better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all."
A pause, then the voice moves hesitantly closer.
"Come back to us, Remus," it whispers. "We love you too. We miss him too. Talk to us, talk to me. Please?"
A hand tries to turn his face around, but he resists, and it stops. He hears a sigh, and quiet footsteps leave the room.
Better to have loved and lost? He tries to snort derisively but his throat is too unused to the action to comply. Better to feel this pain, this all encompassing suffocating agony, then not? He'll never see his smile again, never see that familiar devilish glint in his eyes, never get lost in the wondrous intricacies of that body he knew so well, never feel that sweet ecstasy and shuddering release in his embrace.
Tears well in his eyes, true tears, cleansing; and he lets them fall as he remembers. He remembers their fist kiss, how sweet and shy and awkward and sexy it was, and how he felt like a giddy girl afterwards. He remembers the taste of his lover in his mouth, the feel of him in his arms, and weeps for what he has lost and will never experience again.
"Sirius." He whispers the name in his creaky disused voice, and bows his head as he lets the tears dissolve some of the grey inside.
Outside, a beam of sunlight pierces the low clouds and briefly gilds the neighbouring Muggle houses as he watches through newly opened eyes.