"And when, with gladness in his face, he placed his hand upon my own, to comfort me, he drew me in among the hidden things.
Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air, so that, as soon as I set out, I wept."
When Remus left for Hogwarts he finally sold the flat he'd been living in for ten years. The bottom floor and cellar of a Victorian terrace on the Camden Road. Small kitchen, tiny living room, bedroom with a floor to ceiling window looking over a square foot of grass. A cement lined cellar with a triple padlock and a quarter-inch gap underneath the door beneath which a wand could pass in the morning when the broken and beaten wizard could muster enough strength to mutter accio before breaking down into tears. The flat that had been bought by dear Uncle Alphard's money under the name of one Mr Lupin and one Mr Black. He sold the flat as soon as he heard Sirius was out, accepted the job with Dumbledore and left, knowing Sirius would come looking for him. He had stayed in that flat in a state of limbo, unable to leave behind such memories but unable to ever regain them.
As soon as he had seen that front page, those manic eyes and desperate face, deep deep down Remus thought maybe Sirius might be innocent. He knew how Sirius had escaped, knew that he must have chosen now and something, deep deep down just wasn't ready to see that face in the flesh. So he sold up, packed his belongings, meagre as they were, and stepped on to platform 9 and 3/4 for the fifteenth time in his life.
Twelve Grimmauld Place is dire but it is somehow fitting to be dragged back here. After Hogwarts, after the revelations and realisation, after the tears and tantrums and screaming, hideous rows and plenty of making up, after months of hotels and b&b's and various caves and woods, both Remus and Sirius end up here. A place they are neither welcome nor wanted, a place they had left when their love was still brand new. Sirius had stood proudly, announcing he was both gay and in love with a werewolf at the kitchen table. His father struck him so hard his left eye socket fractured and his eye bled. Remus carried him from that house, levitated their belongings, got them to their flat safely and held Sirius all night while he cried and cried and cried. And now, as broken and lost as they are, they return. That place, deep deep down inside Remus, starts to hope once more - maybe they'll just start again. That when this is over they'll walk out of this house and into a flat and their life can start over afresh just where they left off.
Three months have passed and Remus still hates the house. It's cold and dark and smells of gin and death and earth. Remus shivers every time he steps over the threshold, he can feel the evil in this place just creeping into his bones. He hates the fucking house elf that looks at him like he's filth, he hates the fucking portrait that screeches at him whenever it gets the chance. Not unlike it's subject, who had hated him from the day she laid her pureblood eyes on his half-blood, mongrel self. He hates the fact that Sirius has begun to resemble a ghost more and more, he's only just consented to letting Remus cut his hair after three months of walking around like a wild man.
The first meeting of the Order will be next week and it weighs heavy in the distance, Sirius will be exposed to the eyes of those who both hated him and abandoned him to Azkaban. Remus was one, although his hatred was tempered by that whole undying love thing which he supposes alleviates some of the guilt. Yes darling, I thought you killed everyone we knew and loved but I still loved you so y'know...
They've been sleeping in the same bed for nigh on two months now, they didn't even talk about it. Sirius said lets go to bed, Remus followed and before he could stutter and apologise for his presumption Sirius was under the covers and telling him to turn the light out before he got into bed. They've kissed and held hands and had long meaningful talks but it seems that turning back time for twelve long and lonely years is a magic even they cannot conjure. Remus lays awake most nights, staring at the open curtains and trying to turn back time with the power of his mind. So far his attempts have failed. They have got as far as hands on flesh, Remus shying away from such intimate touches after so long and Sirius finishing quickly as though he's afraid this is just a fleeting dream.
Three days before the first Order meeting and the Weasley's move in. All of them, and their pets, and their clothes and their pranks. The house has come alive, suddenly those dark corners are filled with bright young faces, and the creaks and moans of this dying house are drowned out behind shrieks of laughter and cracks of apparating twins and the cries of an anxious mother who adopts the two men into her brood immediately. Remus has been smiling, really smiling almost all day, and Sirius? Well Sirius is a changed man. He's been cracking jokes and playing tricks and the twins are practically in love with him (Legend mate, proper legend!) and everything is just good for the first time in... too long.
Tonight things are different as well, Remus crawls under the covers having just come from the shower where he spent the better part of twenty five minutes trying to rinse dust and spider webs and something sticky and purple that he just doesn't want to think about from his hair. Sirius turns over immediately and wraps himself round Remus, his skin still slightly damp and warm. He trails his hands down over Remus's belly, tickling slightly. When Remus starts laughing and batting his hands away he leans up and kisses those smiling lips before climbing over Remus and straddling his hips, pinning his hands to the bed either side of his head.
He doesn't remove his lips for long, torturous and oxygen starved minutes. When he finally pulls away Remus catches something in his eyes, something he recognises, something old and mischievous and quite evil. It makes him grin.
Sirius returns the grin, bright enough to light a ten watt bulb, before his lips start drifting downwards, licking along his jawline, sucking on his pulse point, catching on his collar bone, dipping between them before finally releasing Remus's hands. Remus immediately grabs hold of Sirius's shoulders, arching and bucking up under his tongue that's still descending, passed nipples and ribs and navel and along the mousy brown trail of hair that's still slightly wet and soapy. Sirius licks a carefully placed line along the crease of Remus's thigh, and then takes Remus's cock into his mouth in one hungry motion. Remus's head falls back against the pillows with a dull thud, his fingers gripping Sirius's hair almost painfully tight. This is familiar, this position, this feeling, the sound of Remus's gasps and grunts and exhaled prayers, the fingers twisting into his hair and pulling. He takes a deep breath and forces his lips down, right down until his feels he's going to choke, he can't last very long (and secretly decides to practise because he used to be able to, dammit) before pulling back but Remus doesn't seem to be complaining.
Remus's breath is hitching with every inhalation, his lungs just can't get enough oxygen, he's light-headed and dizzy and he's quite sure that if he wasn't laying down already he'd fall over. He slides his fingers through Sirius hair and they catch on a knot, no matter how often it gets brushed it seemed to get tangled instantly, Remus thinks he might try and find a spell to... His train of though it rudely interrupted and then, with one clever and slightly evil swirl of Sirius's tongue all trains of thought leave the station in Remus's head simultaneously. He lays there, gasping and pulling at Sirius's hair and staring at the stars patterned across the insides of his eyelids. Sirius slides his lips tightly up the length of Remus's cock before releasing it with a totally obscene popping sound.
"Look at me."
Remus groans but opens his eyes just in time to see Sirius grinning up at him before wrapping his lips round the head of Remus's cock and sucking hard. Remus cries out, his fingers digging into the duvet and his back arching. He isn't going to last much longer, not watching Sirius working his mouth up and down like he' savouring every moment just as much as he is himself. Remus swallows hard and runs two fingers along Sirius's jawline, watching his cheeks hollowing and then he's screaming Sirius's name as he comes hard and hot down Sirius's throat.
The meeting does not go well. Barely ten minutes in and Dumbledore turns to face Sirius.
"I'm sorry Sirius, as I'm sure you'll have guessed by now, but I don;t think it's a good idea for you to leave this house. Not under any circumstances." Sirius opens his mouth to argue but Dumbledore pre-empts his words. "Harry will be brought here, under guard of very worthy members of the Order, but you must stay here. Until the truth is accepted and your name is cleared, you must not leave this house." Having placed Sirius under house arrest the headmaster swiftly changes the topic of conversation. Sirius sits, glowering at the water jug in front of him for fifteen minutes before deciding the best way to help the Order would be to make sarcastic comments after every single person speaks. Mostly people ignore him, give him sympathetic glances, cough irritably. It isn't until he snaps at Molly that Remus smacks his hand against the table.
"Shut. Up." He hisses. Sirius glares back for a moment before dropping his stare back to the water jug. The meeting finally ends and everyone leaves quietly, seemingly unwilling to incur Sirius's wrath.
Tonks leaves last, pulling the door shut tight behind her. The house creaks and sighs as everyone leaves, guests creep past the bloody portrait that they still haven't managed to get off the wall, apparate, hurry down the darkened street outside. The others climb into beds and showers and nightmares. There is a scratching from behind the wall which suggests that tomorrow will see Sirius donning the ludicrous yellow rubber gloves to attack a nest of fuck-knows-what behind the kitchen cabinet. Remus sighs and paces across the cold stone floor, he reaches the counter and pushes his palms flat against the surface. Sirius stays sitting at the kitchen table, pouting slightly, although it's not as alluring nor convincing as it was fourteen years ago.
"Go on. Say whatever it is you're dying to say." He scuffs his slippers against the floor. Remus sighs, his shoulders shifting under the light cotton of his shirt.
"I have nothing to say."
"Oh please. Come on, out with it before it eats away your insides -"
"Fine! Fine, Siri you wanna know what I wanted to say? You are not a kid any more and you can't pout to get your own way. And it's not fair to attack every body else just because... because. You can't, you can't treat this like it was a game of fucking cowboys and indians. We're not planning a kitchen raid in the middle of night here, this is real Siri and just because you can't go doesn't mean your input wouldn't have been appreciated. We're not... we're not children anymore..." Remus's throat tightens involuntarily, he blinks back encroaching tears, his fists clenched round the edge of the countertop. Children, the children that we were, the children that were happy and brave and in love. He walked into Hogwarts and for the first time in all those years he realised how young he was when he fell in love with Sirius Black, he looked at those tiny faces and realised how much he lost and how young he was when it was ripped from him. His knuckles turn white as he grips the edge of the counter harder.
"You think I treat this like a game?" Sirius uses a low tone that's all the more threatening as it's barely a whisper.
"I think you don't think about your own well-being. You don't seem to care how much danger you're in..."
"Oh, what have I got to loose I ju-"
"ME!" Remus roars, spinning round and skidding across the floor, he grabs Sirius by the scruff of his collar and stares straight into the haunted darkness of his eyes. "You fucking bastard, what about ME!? I spent every fucking day for eleven years loving you and then I lost you! You were just GONE and so was everyone and do you even - don't you ever - I was all alone Siri, I had no one. NO ONE. And now you're back and if you get caught - if I lost you again, it'd... We're not kids Siri, we don't win just because we're the good guys." Remus lets go, pushing sirius back in his chair. He looks old suddenly, as though he learnt all the truths of life in one afternoon and just can't carry them all.
"We won the first time, because we were the good guys." Sirius stands up, resting one skeletal hand against the table as Remus shakes his head and takes a few steps back.
"Did we? What exactly did we win, Siri? Coz I can tell you what we lost, it might take a while, but as for winning? We didn't fucking win that war." He's crying now, angry tears streaking down his cheeks as he grits his teeth and starts making a mental list of everything they lost; it starts with friends and family and ends with innocence and faith and some other vague and abstract ideas that they'll never get back.
"How can you - He was gone Remy. He was gone for all that time. People have been free and happy and safe and alive and -"
"Celebrating! The whole world was celebrating and my whole universe just fell apart. Our best friends died. We... you were convicted of a crime you never committed. We lost twelve years Siri. We were kids and we had so much and that bastard he took everything and..."
Remus knows he's rambling, unsure as to whether he's talking of Peter or Voldemort or just old man time. Sirius tries to pull him close but he pushes him away, paces across the floor again, crying and shaking and muttering and unable to stop thinking about twelve fucking years of being in the cold. When he pushes Sirius away for the second time he looses his temper.
"I'm sorry! OK? I'm sorry that we went from those happy kids who had the entire fucking world in front of them to... to this! To two, sad, lonely old men stuck in the ninth circle of hell." He drops his hands to his sides in defeat, sitting heavily at the table again and staring, unseeing at the bloody water jug again.
Remus finally stops muttering and pacing and swallows hard, he blinks slowly, fighting back the sting of tears in his eyes. There are maybe three whole minutes of silence, filled by the sounds of the house - the water rushing through pipes, the kids shouting goodnight across the hall, whatever it is behind the kitchen cabinet starts scrabbling around again. A door bangs shut.
"Why the ninth circle?" It's a stupid question but it's all he can think to say. His eyes stay fixed on a crack in the flagstones of the kitchen floor. He catches site of Sirius looking up in his peripheral vision but can't drag his eyes away from that one spot. He wonders how far down the crack goes, through the foundations, through the earth, right down into hell?
"Betrayers and traitors. Right down there at the bottom with old flamy knickers himself." Sirius gives a grim smile and picks at the edge of the table with an overly long finger nail. He's let Remus clean them and file them but just won't let him cut those nails.
"You're not a traitor." Remus croaks. He's surprised to find just how close to tears he his. No - Sirius is not a traitor, he didn't kill James or Lily or Peter or twelve strangers. He didn't sell them all out. He just thought Remus was the traitor.
looks over at him, looks like he's about to get up but doesn't.
"I betrayed you though, didn't I? Or didn't trust you. Same thing really. And I went and got myself locked up and... you believed it. You believed I'd done it. Making you think that... I reckon I deserve the ninth circle." His eyes are over bright, full of tears just waiting to spill over. Remus takes a hesitant step towards the table, and then another and before he knows what's happened Sirius is standing and holding him and crying into his neck with terrible, awful, empty sobs that seem to echo through his too obvious ribcage.
"What - what about me?" Remus asks, pushing the heel of his hand into his eyes to try and stem the flow of tears. Sirius is holding his hand now and pushing the hair away from the tracks of his tears, cupping his cheek and brushing his thumb along the line of Remus's lips.
"I reckon you get to be right up there." He flicks his eyes upwards vaguely looking like he's rolling his eyes sarcastically. "Right up there at the top. The first circle. Limbo for Lupin." He smiles sadly and catches Remus's tears with his thumb.
"I don't get to go to heaven?" Remus asks through sobs and tears and a smile that convinces no one. He doesn't even believe in heaven but it seems like an important question at the moment. Like maybe they're talking about something bigger than some stupid poem they read in Muggle Studies twenty odd years ago.
Sirius looks right at him, right into his eyes and smiles that same sad smile again. It's heartbreaking, such a terrible thing to see on a face that had been so handsome. A look like that would have had eighteen year old Remus on his back in seconds. But that smile, it's far, far too old and bears very little trace of any humour. He pulls Remus close and whispers in his ear as he strokes the sweat-damp hair at the back of Remus's neck.
"No love, we don't get to go to heaven. Not anymore."
They're both crying, holding each other close. Too much has happened for things to ever be perfect again, too many years spent apart, one clinging to memories as they were pulled out piece by piece from his heart and the other spending every moment trying to rip them out himself. Too many soldiers fallen by their sides, too many killed by their hands, even if it was in the name of good.
It seems so very unfair that those two boys, those little children who lived all those years ago, who lived for schemes and tricks, who were heroes, legends in their day, should end up here - scared and cold and more than a little crazy. Sirius runs his palms up and down Remus's spine, his own sobs subsiding he hushes Remus until their standing, suspended in time, in the middle of the kitchen, wrapped so tightly together not a force on earth could separate them.
"Look on the bright side baby." Sirius whispers, pulling Remus's head back so he can look into those eyes again, eyes that reflect the candle light and refract every flicker a thousand times. Remus cocks his head questioningly. "Devil's got all the best tunes anyway."
At that, Remus laughs, really laughs even as the tears slide past his nose. Sirius can't help but smile too and oh, how the years just melt away, Remus is looking at the great and wonderful Sirius Black, the boy who ruled their school for seven solid years and ruled his heart a whole lot longer.
"C'mon. We're old miserable bastards. Let's go to bed." Sirius releases Remus from the bear hug and takes his hand, squeezing gently he pulls him up through the house. The ascent is almost therapeutic, every step Remus takes he feels as though he's leaving something down there, in that cold, dark basement with the bastard house elf and the soul-draining meetings.
They make love that night for the first time in over a decade. Sirius is careful to trace every scar with the tip of his tongue and the pad of his thumb. He traces old familiar patterns and new, deeper, angrier lines criss-crossing Remus's back and legs and heart, old sins and new sins all laid out like a road map across his lovers body. He pays gentle attention to a series of horizontal scars on Remus's forearm; too thin to be the wolf's work and too neat to be a strangers, a testament to just how dark the days got while he was away. Sirius cries a little and so does Remus, his shameful secret exposed so obviously makes him feel vulnerable and opened up deep, deep down inside.
Remus clings to Sirius as he pushes into his body with very little preparation, it's ok, Remus thinks maybe he's been waiting for this for a long time. They move together like two people remembering, hands wrapped together, mouths colliding clumsily with the clack of teeth. Sirius's lips are trailing over Remus's neck and Remus's hands are gliding over Sirius's back and then they're crying out, louder and louder and someone's going to hear but neither of them care.
Remus wraps his thighs round Sirius's hips, far bonier than the last time they were in this position, and arches up into every thrust, their sweat-soaked chests brushing together and causing a slight burn of friction. Remus's cries become less and less coherent, he calls Sirius's name, and then the name of a few deities and then just growls and gasps and sighs and digs his nails deep into Sirius's shoulders.
Sirius rests his forehead against Remus's shoulder as he tries to control the rhythm of his hips, having not lasted longer than five minutes with Remus's hand, this is proving to be a test of wills. He bites down on the salt-sweat-soapy skin of Remus's shoulder, licks away the sting of the bite, leads a trail of hungry kisses right up Remus's neck until he nips at the earlobe.
"Missed you." He manages to grunt out, the force of his thrust pushing Remus up the bed an inch. Remus nods desperately in agreement. A few more viciously hard thrusts and Remus has to place his hand on the headboard so that he doesn't smack his head. He uses the leverage to push back against Sirius's every thrust and pretty soon they're both gasping and begging and coming, fingers twisted together and lips pressed into a fierce kiss.
They lay quietly, still and peaceful for minutes afterwards, waiting for their breathing and their brains to return to something akin to normal. There are no more words to be said, they kiss, slowly and carefully and it says so much more than any poet has ever managed. Remus holds Sirius close to his well worn heart all night and Sirius sleeps soundly, lulled by the reassuring thumping of his darling Remy's heartbeat so close to him at long last. That place, deep deep down inside Remus, it remembers the last time Sirius slept there, above his heart, and it thinks maybe they have a better chance, second time around.