Sirius Black has always known his way around words. It's not the words themselves, really, that come to him easily. On the contrary, the words are probably the most difficult part – he either says too much or not enough, either bursts something out in the heat of the moment or holds everything to himself. And when he can be bothered enough to try, he always ends up saying the wrong thing.
But Sirius Black knows how to make people obey through words. Sirius Black knows how to get into people's heads and figure out exactly what they need to hear, exactly what will hit the wound, exactly what will allow him to get his way. Sirius Black knows how to make someone leave a conversation feeling exactly the way he wants them to feel.
With Remus Lupin, however, he hits a block.
It's a cold October morning when a barn owl drops a copy of the Daily Prophet down onto the breakfast table, and Sirius gets the news of the werewolf attack from the look on Remus' face way before he ever sees it in print.
It's the way he picks at his sweater uncomfortably, diverts his gaze from everyone around him, shifts in his seat in an almost guilty manner.
You're your own blind spot, Sirius wants to say. You can detect destructive behaviour in everyone but yourself. You don't know how to survive without taking on all the guilt around you. You don't think you even deserve to. But he doesn't know how to phrase it, doesn't know how to say it in a way that will make it enough or genuine or real, so he just passes the carton of orange juice across the table instead.
It's a rainy Sunday in the middle of December when the four of them sit in the centre of the common room, heads bent over a piece of parchment that comes to life for the very first time.
It's the way his face lights up not just with joy but an inability to grasp the happiness in front of him, a mixture of gratefulness and self-doubt and wonder and hesitant delight.
This isn't why we keep you around, Sirius wants to say. This brilliance isn't all there is to you. You think you're dispensable and I can't comprehend how you ever could be. I'm either too much of one thing or not enough of the other and you make me want to be balanced. You make me want to be okay.
It's a bright spring afternoon on the day Remus finally forgives him, wearing a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, wearing an expression that says he's sacrificing his own morals because he doesn't have enough people he can lose to begin with.
You think you're the monster when the only thing you're killing is the monster inside me, Sirius wants to say. You make me better, Sirius wants to say. You make me tolerate myself. You make me want to be alive.
It's a damp summer evening when the two stand across from each other in the middle of the dormitory, and it's the day Sirius decides that he's finally going to say something, anything.
Remus is wearing an amused, sarcastic expression, arms folded and expectant of dramatics as Sirius paces back and forth in front of him.
'Sirius – '
'I love you.'
The words hang in the air awkwardly and Sirius instantly thinks that they just don't feel like enough, but then his eyes catch Remus' and, just like that, he knows that he'll never have to say anything else. Because when his lips meet Remus', when their teeth clash against one another, it's with the weight of all the words they've never said, all the longing and the desperation to give the other the world, and it feels like they've known it all along.
It feels like there was never a need to say anything else.
