That desperate half longing, like a dream but larger, realer, more painful. Almost a promise, albeit a cruel one, that is gone, come the morning. It says, seductively, try, even when hope is dead.
"I'm going out."
"Oh, don't you FUCKING DARE!" he exploded, screaming through the open archway, throwing his book through the space. It landed, pathetically, open in the middle of the kitchen floor after sliding a good distance. Sirius turned from the front door and looked at him standing there, seething in the living room, arm still hanging at his side from having thrown it.
"The fuck is wrong with you?"
"Come back."
"Moons, I'm just going out." He stood with one hand on the doorknob, defiant. Remus looked at him darkly.
"Don't you dare leave."
"What do you think I'm going to do?" Remus fell silent. His eyes darted to his wand, on the other side of the room, and then back to Sirius' face. Sirius stood staring at him, mystified. "…Where do you think I'm going to go?"
"Come back." He growled, low, and Sirius shook his head again.
"You're psychotic. You're a fucking crazy person." He grabbed his keys off the counter and opened the front door, one eye still on the werewolf as he left. "Sometimes I wonder, you know." He muttered, with one last glance back. He slammed the door behind him. Remus took hold of the telephone, the nearest object, and threw it with such force into the kitchen that it smashed into a thousand splintered pieces, feebly ringing as it did.
Sometimes all that's left is what's left. All that can be saved is what's already run its course. There's no shame in feeling loss, but no relief, either. Sometimes a reminder is dappled sunlight; it brings crashing back a kiss, an afternoon, a spoken word. sometimes the whole morning can be full of it, and he wakes on a wave that sweeps, screaming, across bedclothes and tables and floors and takes everything with it, until "what's left" seems to be nothing at all.
"Hey." Silent, waiting. The summer had built to this point, hazy atop some waving tower of sunlit heat, the skin peeling from their backs. The light was filtered through thin trees, its shade a welcome respite from the weather.
Sirius sat close to him, breathing hard, nervous, teenage, red-faced. They knew it was coming; that holding hands in the rain wasn't a necessity, that their ending up alone was no coincidence, but engineered, structured carefully into each moment. It was a conspiracy they had never discussed, but which they perpetrated together.
"What?"
Sirius smiled and looked away, shaking his head, letting out his once-bated breath. "Nothing. It doesn't matter."
Remus laughed back and pulled him close and kissed him, firmly, with no hesitation at all.
Nothing is clean, nothing ends. He continues in an aching succession of tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows, his life damp with the ebb of that one wave for weeks afterwards. Cabinets drip; papers stick; the floorboards furl and undulate. He, atop it all, is lost.
That night was just a haze of sound, little more. An explosion in his living room, frantic words. Dizzy apparition, in disbelief. Not believing, even when they lay on the ground. Even when he turned over the ragdoll and James stared up at him, unblinking. Nothing else remained. Nothing else needed to.
There is light in everything, though. Everywhere. Sometimes he can almost believe he has moved on, that that period in his life is over. Sometimes when his wife turns he sees her, only her, in her face, rather than a century of failures and guilt. Sometimes he can gather her in his arms and kiss her and feel nothing at all but a kind of love, albeit a version he has never quite known, before.
"You visited."
Remus stood silent, staring at him, arms wrapped around himself. Sirius held the bars in his fists, talking. His hair wasn't washed, his face was dirty, the bones under his eyes sharply prominent.
"You came to see me." Sirius rephrased, looking eagerly, desperately at him. He reached for Remus' hand with his own and caught it only briefly before the werewolf flinched away. Sirius stared at him.
"Please. Remus. You're here. You're here, aren't you? Listen to me."
Remus, who never cried, who had never known himself to, shook his head and looked at his own arms, tight across his stomach. He shook his head again, eyes hot. He looked up.
"Remus, please."
He left. Sirius called after him, called his name over and over. Outside, standing on the shore, waiting to be taken home, Remus trembled with anger and guilt and loathing, and hatred, all because he missed him. He almost believed that he was innocent. And that was almost worse than all of this put together.
Other times he would leave, for no reason other than to have left.
"Will you come see me for Christmas?"
Remus gathered his knees to his chest and smiled at him. "What, here? In this mess? You should be so lucky."
Sirius punched him in the arm half-heartedly, then resumed looking at him in earnest, sitting faux-casually with his arm over the back of the sofa. He stared with intent at the whorl in Remus' ear.
"I'll clean it."
"You won't."
"No, probably not." He admitted, grinning roguishly. "I live dangerously, you know that."
"In terms of your health, it certainly is dangerous." Remus leaned back on the sofa, the top of his head touching Sirius' arm.
"Come see me, anyway. Live dangerously, too."
"I don't know. I think Mum's expecting me at home."
"Then bring her. Both of you can come over."
Remus laughed, surprised. "What on earth are you going on about?"
"I want to meet her. I want her to meet me. I want her to know." Sirius gabbled, looking him full in the face, then wincing as if waiting for impact.
"You're mad." Remus chuckled. "Look, I don't think springing you on her around Christmas is a good idea. But maybe, if you clean, I'll drop by in the evening, after Mum's? I've got you a present, after all. Seems a shame to wait until boxing day."
"Moons, I just-"
Remus interrupted. "Sirius. Shut up. I know." He rolled over on the sofa, sitting against Sirius, and kissed the side of his face, then his mouth. "I know."