It was Dumbledore's idea to have Sirius lay low at Remus's. He had turned up at Remus's flat the same night that Sirius had escaped on Buckbeak, landing on the doorstep in a flurry of whirling cloak and glowing beard. He didn't stay long, just long enough to get to the point. "Sirius is a very different man now, Remus," Dumbledore had explained sternly, "I think it best for him to stay with somebody he wholly trusts. Somebody who can take care of him the way he needs to be taken care of."
Remus had accepted only because Dumbledore had suggested it. Anything to make him feel useful in these foreboding times. Deep down though Remus knew that he agreed because a part of him yearned to nurture Sirius, to relive what it was like to be in his presence. However Remus had seriously underestimated Dumbledore's words. Sirius was a very different man. Remus came to learn that he was a very different man these days, too.
It was strange to have this man back in his life. A man who, for so long, Remus had loathed and blamed for that terrible night, that had destroyed everything he had loved forever. He knew now that Sirus was innocent, but even the truth could do nothing to cure the twisting ropes of unease lay coiled at the pit of Remus's stomach. He found it hard to completely relax around Sirius at first, and he knew that Sirius sensed it.
As Sirius began to settle in Remus realised how much he had forgotten. How Sirius took his tea, for instance. How nosily he turned the pages of books and how he hummed to himself in the morning. Then Remus arrived in the kitchen in the early hours of the morning one day, his throat parched and longing for a glass of water, to find Sirius sat at the small table drinking coffee. Ah, the insomnia. Remus had forgotten about that too. In his youth Remus used to suffer terrible joint pains and migraines as a result of his transformations, and Sirius was always willing to sit up with him in the Gryffindor common room late in to the night.
The reason behind Sirius's insomnia had never fully been explained, but Remus had always understood what a brilliant, though troubled mind Sirius had possessed, even back then. Remus didn't imagine it was easy to sleep with a mind like that. He also couldn't imagine that thirteen haunting years in Azkaban had done anything to improve Sirius's mind any.
So Remus filled up the kettle and make them fresh cups, and the two of them sat quietly in the kitchen, bathed in the blue light that appears only before sunrise. Remus tried not to stare at anything in particular, but he found his eyes constantly sliding towards Sirius. Or rather, Sirius's face. It was gaunt and blank and almost frightening. Remus struggled to connect the ridiculously handsome Sirius he had once knew with this empty shell sat before him. Then Sirius's grey eyes connected with Remus's in a flash.
"Just say it, Moony," Sirius sighed.
Remus swallowed. "Jesus, Sirius. You look like hell," He said.
"You always had a way with words, Moony," Sirius said. He grinned, casting in to the light a set of mottled, yellow teeth, resting in his mouth like mossy tombstones.
"I could... I could run you a bath, if you want," Remus offered. His mouth was still very dry.
"All right. Thanks," Sirius nodded, then he slowly added, "Mate."
They were trying to adjust, or to restore. Remus wasn't sure which. They'd get there in the end. He gathered up the empty coffee cups and began rinsing them under the tap. He was very aware of Sirius watching him.
"Rem," Sirius called, just as Remus was leaving to go to the bathroom.
"Yes?" Remus enquired with a turn.
"Really. Thanks," Sirius croaked.
"Anything," Remus sighed.
He meant it.