Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine.
This is for the wonderful and inspiring pippi55. Many thanks. :)
Many thanks also to tat1312, for telling me about the sentence - and, as ever, just plain being the best beta I know.
A/N: I wrote this with the kinks 'Men's shoulders ' and 'Angst'. I wasn't even planning anything at the time, I just happened upon this quote and... bam. Mere hours later, an idea had come upon me. Fully formed. Fully weird, too, I'm afraid. I'm not so sure I'm keen on how this turned out, really, because... well... I just can't judge it. But I hope there is some worth to it, at least.~
"The worst prison would be a closed heart." - Pope John Paul II
Above Remus's clothes, the battering of the years isn't as pronounced. With shirts and robes it is almost impossible to see the slight sag of his broad shoulders, or the unhealthy pallor of his skin, and concealed under layer upon layer of clothing - better than any lie - the only clues to time and grief's true cruelty are the grey in his hair and the not-quite contained weariness of his expression. If you didn't know him before, thinks Sirius, he'll always have been this way.
(Though he wasn't. Not then.)
Now Remus's body is weakened, but even so the contrast of his white skin and the dark moles dusting across his shoulders bring forth the old grand piano, straight and balanced, with the ebony and ivory keys Sirius had also sometimes played around with. From the top to the bottom he'd ran his hands, mock-playfully, and felt the instrument's delightful yielding beneath them. Asking: "Do you have any requests?" His half-closed eyes trace the movement of those remembered hands now.
"You should have just got rid of this old thing, Rem," he rasps, not quite realising that the piano he's staring at hasn't been there for years.
Remus, who is busy ironing the off-white shirt that he'll be wearing today, doesn't appear to hear him - or at least, he doesn't respond. Briefly, Sirius glances back at him, watching the muscles of his lightly scarred back move - just like he used to, whenever he could - as he runs that odd Muggle contraption of his ("For better results than a spell") across the shirt, first layer of the lie that'll soon cover him. Sirius has been 'lying low' here for less than a week, and this is the third time that Remus - proper, shy, reluctant Remus Lupin - hasn't covered up around him.
Briefly, he wonders what he means by it.
But then Sirius turns away, away from Remus, away from the piano, to give them some privacy.