On a dingy London block in 1979, everything managed to look cheap and used. The buildings, of course, and even more than that, the people who walked around, whether in the modern streetwear or a more reserved suit and tie. And even when the sun shone on the hottest August day imaginable, it still seemed that, on that particular block, a permanent cloud had descended. There was a series of grayer and grayer flats as the street moved southward, all placed above unclean-seeming businesses; there were small, family-owned bakeries strewn among the none-too-subtle XXX bookstores and the occasional "girls girls girls" show that flashed a risqué dancing silhouette in varying neon colors.
It was on this street that, if anyone were dull enough to be passing by at seven in the morning on a Saturday (in what everyone, muggle and wizard, increasingly called "dark times"), a loud, startling crack could be heard, much like a gunshot. However, nothing unusual could be seen for several minutes. If anyone were looking out their window, or taking an early morning cigarette break, they might catch a glimpse of a man striding purposefully out from between two close-together buildings that formed a very narrow, dark alley between them. He was quickly folding up something that caught the early morning light, shimmering as though it weren't quite solid—but it was quickly shoved into what appeared to be a very deep pocket of his sensible trousers.
He made a sharp right turn and entered the continually open bar that was currently releasing an overly loud, for seven in the morning, stream of jazz music into the empty street through its wide-open windows.
"Remus," the bartender greeted him with a gruff nod as he passed. Remus returned the nod curtly, wrenching open the door to the narrow staircase behind the bar and taking the steps two at a time. Anyone watching would think there were a fire he had to attend to.
No such luck.
The flat was in a right state; everything appeared to be covered in a thin layer of dust, and the place smelled absolutely foul, like somebody had died and nobody had bothered cleaning up the corpse. Molding takeaway containers were stacked three-high on the coffee table, from Indian and Chinese restaurants, and then larger boxes that had held pizza or fish and chips, and bent meat pie tins procured from a shop a few blocks away, the paper that thick, cheap sandwiches came squished in, and some wizarding sweet wrappers.
Those weren't the only things that revealed that apartment as a wizard's; there was a battered, neglected racing broom on the floor near one of the walls; magical textbooks, novels, and theory texts, without any shelves to be set on, were in impossibly high piles on the stained carpet; a wand – eleven and a quarter inches, Juniper, unicorn hair – stuck out of the wrappers and garbage; and, just in general, there was an air of neglected magic about the place, as though somebody magical had lived there once and gone away… except for the fact that a very magical person was still sitting lazily on the couch.
Remus, who had, annoyingly, never been given a key to Sirius' flat, knocked loudly and insistently on the door. He usually had better manners, but he had more important things to worry about than Sirius' upstairs neighbor waking up a bit earlier than she'd like. When there was no answer, he sighed, frustrated. With two staircases, one above and one below him, within easy sight of where he stood, he didn't particularly feel like risking the use of a spell just to get in, and he didn't want to have to break down the door. Not because he couldn't, mind. Remus had come a very far way from where he was when he was eleven and a skinny, scared little boy, underfed and dressed in hanging clothing; he had filled out, become a strong young man, and he could fight off Sirius and James at once, if pressed, without wands.
No, but really, risking the chance of being seen doing a spell was probably better than attracting everyone's attention to Sirius's quite conspicuous flat. Remus pulled his wand from an inner pocket of his coat, blocked the view of anyone who could come down the staircases with his back, and pointed his wand at the doorknob.
His spell had a stronger effect than he had meant, and the door burst open with a bang. Remus rushed in, quickly shutting the door behind him and repairing the doorknob.
Only after it was securely fixed did he realize how his eyes were stinging from the mere smell of the place, and the banging of the door, despite not startling Sirius or prompting him to move from his spot whatsoever, had brought up all of what would look like dust throughout the room. Remus was confused at first, until his eyes found Sirius in the dim light the mostly-drawn blinds let in. There were two parallel lines of powder on the coffee table that Remus could vaguely see over the piles of trash, and if he hadn't known just how—how different Sirius had become, he would have believed it.
"Powder?" Remus said, feigning amusement that ended up sounding rather dark instead. "Bit high society for you, isn't it? Thought you'd gotten rid of all reminders of your sordid upbringing."
Sirius smiled sardonically, but his eyes were glassy, and his hands shook. Remus suspected he had taken another dose not five minutes prior.
The blasé way that Sirius was regarding him made the whole situation seem absurd—Sirius, looking like a mixture between a reject from Dumbledore's School of Fashion and a punk who had just realized rebellion, with a bit of cocaine on his upper lip. He wore jeans that were too tight, along with a studded belt, a plain white t-shirt, a worn leather jacket with spikes whose sticking charms were failing, and just under that an ill-fitting purple waistcoat with what looked like crescent moon insets that were actually glowing. A gentle breeze came in through the cracked window, and some of the food debris on the table blew off, and the lines of cocaine blurred together.
Remus turned away, unable to look at Sirius, whose eyes had now become affixed to the muggle television sequestered in the corner, muted but still playing static. An immense cold feeling rose, beginning in his gut and spreading through his chest and arms, and when it came to his throat he cried out in a sort of strangled rage, aimlessly ripping his wand through the air and not regarding the earsplitting noise that occurred due to his incantation-less magic. It was just pure feeling that rippled throughout the room, overturning the coffee table and shattering the television screen. He managed to pull back before the glass in the window cracked, clutching his wand to his chest and breathing heavily.
Sirius continued to stare impassively from the couch, not seeming to care about the condition of his flat in the least. The thought just angered Remus more, and he crossed the room to Sirius, his fists clenching and unclenching as he went. All at once he wanted to punch Sirius, and strangle him, and pull all his hair out.
"What the fuck have you been? You passed out on that mission, nearly killed me and Peter both, fucking dehydration my arse, by the way, and you've missed two Order meetings, and your head was on the damn table for the three before that, worrying Lily sick, you can't fucking do that to a pregnant woman, Sirius!"
Sirius looked up at him, trembling. The sight just spurred Remus on.
"And none of us has seen you at all in—in—"
"Peter came by a week ago—"
"A fortnight you mean, but I imagine you aren't exactly keeping yourself a calendar these days," Remus snapped furiously.
"Can't imagine Lily was too worried, as she and I never much agree on anything." Sirius' tone was—well, toneless.
He didn't so much flinch when Remus picked him up by the collar, half choking him as he did, and dragged him up. It would have been comical, and he might have made a crack about McGonagall, but nothing seemed particularly funny about it, and Remus was really rather more than half-choking him at this point, still managing to make it seem like an accident.
Remus dragged Sirius bodily down the hallway, his seething rage never subsiding, and just dropped him heavily on the ground. "Undress."
Sirius stared, dumbly.
"I didn't come round to yell at you and then leave you to keep—keep fucking up. You're going to shower, and shave, and then I'm going to cut your hair with my wand—don't you dare complain or I'll hex your nose off your fucking face." Throughout his tirade, there was no hint of a smile, no spark of amusement in his eyes. He just looked angry and exhausted, like he was tired of picking up after Sirius. "So undress, and get in the bloody shower."
Remus slammed the bathroom door behind him hard enough that he was surprised it stayed on the hinges, and once back in the living room, he raised his wand, still clutched tightly in his hand, and began to clean. He wasn't going to let Sirius live here anymore, for starters, and they couldn't very well leave it in that state. He had half a mind to make Sirius clean it up by muggle means, except for the fact that he was like a child without his wand, and would just mess it up further. He was busy incinerating all of the trash in a small, green fire he had shot from his wand into an empty wastebasket when he heard crashing from the bathroom, and hurried into it, only to find Sirius on the floor, looking dazed, with a drawer from the sink's counter on his lap. The contents were strewn throughout the bathroom, and Remus had no doubt he was looking for a hidden stash. The look on his face made Sirius, whose last hit was rapidly wearing off due to Remus' sobering presence, wilt and cower against the wall, as though he thought Remus would punch him.
Remus' wand was still outstretched, which probably didn't help the problem, and, wand arm trembling, he banished everything back to its rightful place, entered the bathroom proper, and slammed the door behind him. It made him feel absolutely rotten that Sirius was cowering from him, and he wondered how much of the wolf he was channeling in his rage, and if Sirius was now reconsidering his tolerance of werewolves, as he looked absolutely petrified.
He decided he didn't much care.
"Get up," he ordered brusquely, and he leaned down to jerk Sirius up by the bicep when he didn't move quickly enough. "Strip."
Remus, frustrated with the size of the room, waved his wand impatiently. It immediately doubled in size, and he pushed by Sirius to turn on the hot water; he grunted at the state of the shower, cast a quick scourgify, and conjured a plain curtain to block the water from the dirty floor.
"Get in." The now nude Sirius followed orders, not bothering with any kind of modesty.
Setting his wand carefully on the cleanest bit of the counter he could find, Remus reached down and pulled his shirttails of out his trousers, unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom up. Sirius, who had not made any move to clean himself, and instead was just standing in the spray, stared at him.
"You don't really think I'm going to leave you alone after that, do you? And nor can I, apparently, trust you to wash yourself, as it appears you haven't done so in at least a month, so I'll beg your pardon if I intrude upon your alone time."
Sirius just stared, until Remus snapped, "Mind your manners."
He carefully folded his shirt and set it down (after deciding he couldn't take it anymore and cast scourgify on absolutely every surface in the room), and the rest of his clothes followed, all neatly folded. Remus thought for a moment, grabbed his wand, and pushed Sirius forward a bit to move into the shower beside him, pulling the shower curtain to shut the water in. Thankfully the expansion charm had worked on the shower as well, and they weren't pressed next to one another.
There were, of course, no grooming items whatsoever in the shower; there was no soap, shampoo, or even a razor, and Remus would have tutted were he not so angry. He waved his wand sternly, and the necessary items appeared.
Sirius turned toward him, appearing to want to ask a question, but he shut his mouth when he saw the fierce look that still remained in his face, and he went for the bar of soap when Remus's deft fingers encircled his wrist more quickly than he could possibly react.
"No, you clearly can't take care of yourself. How could I possibly trust you to wash correctly?" Remus put his wand down on a narrow shower ledge and picked up the soap.
Coloring angrily, Sirius went to snap that he could do it himself when the bar was coming directly toward his face, and he had to shut his mouth tightly, managing to get only a nose full of bubbles that would have been painful, had his nose not become consistently numb about a fortnight prior. It moved down to his filthy neck, spending nearly ten minutes just there to get each layer of grime, and then Remus moved on to Sirius' chest, then arms, then stomach, never varying from his tightly controlled and clinical facial expression.
"Your lack of self-control astounds me," he said as he was on his knees, soaping Sirius' hips and groin, and there was no hint of humor in his voice. Sirius' entire body seemed to color.
"I can't help it."
"No… you wouldn't be able to."
Once Sirius was passably clean, including his hair, which Remus had washed thrice to make absolutely sure, he picked up the razor and instructed Sirius to soap his face in place of shaving cream. He had just begun to ease the razor over Sirius' jaw when he felt calm enough to speak to Sirius logically.
"I don't suppose you've thought up an excuse in the hour and a half you've had since I arrived."
"I—" Sirius began, but broke off, slumping against the side of the shower tiredly. Remus cursed, moving quickly to make sure he didn't cut Sirius. "I've been so tired."
"Yes, I've heard cocaine is a perfect cure for—"
"Just shut up for a second, Remus," Sirius snapped, tired of feeling cowed and small in comparison to someone who he had known since he was eleven years old. "Every day, when I get up—or I'm still up—the whole thing seems fruitless. Not life. Well, yeah, sometimes that too. But this war, it's—sometimes I wonder what I signed up for. I thought, God, I was stupid, and I thought it would all be great fun, I don't know why. Merlin knows Dumbledore lectured us on the dangers of real life often enough, and told us what we were up against. And I was grave through all he said, you know that, but I thought—I didn't realize I was really going to see people murdered in front of me, or be going after Death Eaters without protection save for our wands. And I know—the fucking arsehole—I just know… he was going to get himself killed somehow, incompetent—"
Sirius trailed off, swallowing thickly, and Remus knew he was speaking of Regulus. Now, Sirius was no stranger to emotions, and it wasn't like Remus had never seen him cry before, or vice versa, but it still made him intensely uncomfortable to be standing here with Sirius, who was now leaning with his shoulder firmly against the wall, looking past Remus—at him, but past him—and sobbing. Not uncontrollably, no, that wasn't the Black way, and he still held himself in check, but he was sobbing. And after all of that rage that Remus had felt, and still felt, because he thought a dead brother (dead estranged brother) was hardly an excuse—his own father—well. He felt it wasn't his place, now, to put his arm around Sirius and comfort him, since he had pushed him to admit this. That was more of James' role, or even Peter's, since Peter had a much younger sister and was used to drying her tears; Remus was good at offering practical advice, and intellect, but he wasn't an empathizer.
Remus steadied Sirius on his feet, and held his chin up and kept shaving him until the crying dissipated, somewhat bitterly. By then he was finishing.
"That's a chap," he said distantly, and he looked Sirius in the eye. Sirius, who would swear up and down that the sound he was making wasn't sniffling, nodded stoically.
When Remus turned to get out of the shower, Sirius grasped his shoulder and pulled him closer, and kissed him through the now-cold water raining down on them.
"D'you remember," he asked, hoarsely, "when we fooled around, in seventh year—"
"Sixth year," Remus cut in.
"Sixth year," Sirius corrected. "Always in the alcove off the fourth floor, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was."
"And you called me daft and told me—"
"You'd never manage to get anyone if you couldn't last more than two minutes," Remus finished, and he smiled, though it was strained, for the first time since he had arrived.
"And I promptly proved you wrong by lasting three and a quarter."
Remus kissed him this time, against his better judgment, and he pressed Sirius against the shower wall.
"Is this wise?" Sirius mumbled against Remus' wet skin.
"No, certainly not," Remus replied. He slumped against the back of the shower, looking worn, defeated, and, to be honest, somewhat old. "We can—finish this train of thought when you're clean."
"Aren't I clean enou—oh." Sirius avoided Remus' eyes as he realized the implication. He worried at the skin on his arms and then said, quietly, "You said you ought to do my hair?"
"What?"
"Cut it, I mean."
"I was being—I was angry. Know how much you… well, how long you've grown it."
Indeed, it was well past his shoulders at this point, most often held back with a rubber band, or whatever else he could find.
"No. I think… maybe a fresh start. You know. Cutting off hair, it's—" he struggled to find a fitting word.
"Symbolic?"
"Yeah, that'll do."
Remus, silently, picked up his wand, shook it agitatedly, and muttered an incantation under his breath. The first few inches of his wand split in two, and the other side became handles, turning them neatly into a pair of wooden scissors. Sirius leaned forward, shut the water off, and sucked in a breath in preparation for the first slice, which cut off eight inches or so.
It turned out, he held his breath for the entirety of the short and somewhat sloppy haircut.
"Finite," Remus said, and his wand returned to its normal shape. With one last wave of it at Sirius' head, the uneven edges smoothed out and the sideburns squared themselves off on level with the tops of his ears.
His hair was no more than an inch long anywhere, and the two stood in the shower with the long clippings littering the porcelain around their feet for quite a while, one slumped against the side of the shower, and one the back.