It had been days and they had barley spoken another word to each other beyond polite small talk. Sirius looked permanently like he was about to ask a question that never came. Remus wasn't eager to prompt conversation as he wasn't so sure he wanted to give any answers. Sirius had rummaged through every inch of Remus' little shack, but there was hardly anything there to elucidate anyone on his inner life. He did not keep things of sentimental value beyond his music.

That said, Sirius seemed to be having a good time slowly making his way through all the records on his shelf. He had been making his way year by year, choosing one new album a day. The collection was not comprehensive, but it was still fairly large. Remus was glad for something to fill the space between them. He was relieved to see that Sirius seemed to have held onto some sense of pleasure in life. That he was still capable of finding some kind of joy in the world.

Music had always been special to both of them. When they listened together, for a brief time, it felt like they weren't strangers. Then the music would stop.

Remus was keeping a close eye on him, trying to get handle on his shifting moods and somewhat strange new habits he had developed since the last time they cohabited. He wanted to talk to him, he just didn't know what to say. He knew Sirius was watching him with just as much scrutiny. It reminded him unpleasantly of they way they would walk on eggshells around each other when they were fighting in the past. Like at any moment he could say the wrong thing and spark a dramatic confrontation. Not that Sirius seemed particularly angry. Just somewhat lost.

Sometimes he would sit for hours, not moving, not speaking, almost as if he were barely there. Sometimes he would pace endlessly and fidget with everything he could get his hands on, or give himself a task. Remus' shack had never been cleaner.

He was spending a great deal of time with Buckbeak, who had arrived about a day after Sirius. He explained he had instructed Buckbeak to hide out until he could get word to him, which was easy enough as Sirius had become quite adept at charming non-standard birds with the otherwise relatively uncooperative wand he had picked up on the run. He had wanted to make sure Remus actually had the space to stash the rather large creature, which thankfully he did. He would go out for ages in his Animagus form and laze about with the hippogriff. Buckbeak was already familiar with Remus from Hogwarts and able to hunt field mice and wild rabbits, so it was a fairly harmonious arrangement. He had also been mercifully trained by Hagrid to know the difference between wildlife and agriculture, though Remus put some wards around the chicken run just in case.

He strongly suspected Sirius had been sleeping on the floor. He never came out in the mornings until he heard movement, not wanting to startle him or disturb whatever slumber he'd managed to scrape out a non-existent sleep schedule. He had, however, noticed the blanket and pillow sitting on the wood flooring next to the bed on more than one occasion now. He knew he kept the lights on at night. He didn't seem to like the dark anymore.

At night, he talked to himself. Or at least that's what Remus thought at first. He tried not to listen, to respect his privacy to the point of casting silencing charms on his door when the talking started up, but after the first couple of nights he just couldn't help himself. He was worried. He didn't know what to do, how to understand.

He was fed up not knowing what to say. Where to even start. Maybe Sirius could help him figure it out.

He sat with his back to his bedroom door at four in the morning, woken by the sound of Sirius' voice. Sometimes he whispered, but this time he was quite clear. He did this sometimes, as if he didn't know how loud he was being. Remus suspected he wasn't always even sure when he was speaking. He would make odd comments and then look at Remus as if he were crazy when he responded.

Remus pressed his ear to the door. It all clicked into place when he heard Sirius say James' name. Remus felt a stab through his chest and a burning in his eyes.

He wasn't talking to himself, he was talking to James. How often had he done this over the years?

He didn't speak about anything in particular, he just rambled on and on without breath. Describing places he'd been while on the run. Talking about the wonderful person Harry had grown into.

He apologized a lot. Silent tears ran down Remus' cheeks. Almost fourteen years, yet he still just kept apologizing. Remus understood the feeling.

Eventually he heard his own name come up, spoken with such a heaviness that Remus could feel the weight of it even in himself.

"Prongs, you'd be so proud of him, I don't know how he did it. A teacher. I bet he was fantastic. He's out here in the world and somehow just seems to have pulled it all together in this little place he's built for himself and I just feel awful because I don't think I expected him to have changed at all, let alone for the better. He stayed the same in my head for so many years and all I saw was the worst of it again and again, but I was so fucking stupid, of course he changed! He was out here in the world and things are allowed to grow out here, not like where I was. He grows plants and- and fucking chickens! I'm glad he figured it out. How to live with himself. He could never really do that before, but there I go, underestimating him and assuming the worst and that's exactly what got us all into this fucking mess, what got you and Lily- I'm sorry. I'm sorry, James."

At that point, Sirius broke away on another winding tangent and Remus crawled into bed, placing a silencing charm on his door. He couldn't stand to hear another word. He curled up and tried to take a steadying breath, but instead he felt a deep sob rising in his chest. It had been a long time since he had cried like this.

He had never talked to them. Any of them. He couldn't bear the thought of what they might think if they could hear him. See what he'd become. He couldn't handle imaging how ashamed they would be if they knew what he had done with the life that they had been so cruelly denied.

The next morning started with the smell of coffee. Every morning Sirius made a pot. Remus rubbed at his eyes, feeling a deep throbbing in his head, exhausted and dehydrated, not remembering precisely when he had fallen back asleep.

Sirius was already sat at the table, a plate of toast and a cup of coffee set for Remus. He joined him, taking a long, slow sip.

"How long do you think it'll be before we hear from Dumbledore?" asked Remus idly, making some vague attempt at starting an actual conversation.

"Eager to be rid of me?" asked Sirius, not quite succeeding at passing the comment off as a joke.

"No, not at all. It's just the waiting, not knowing how to move forward. I'm not a fan."

"No, me either. Better to have clear goals. It all gets mixed up otherwise," said Sirius more to himself than anything.

"What do you mean?"

Sirius looked up, a little surprised by the question, as if he hadn't even realized he'd said anything.

"Nothing. It's just time moves a little funny, you know? It's hard to tell the difference but it gets easier when there's something immediate to grab onto. A goal," he explained like it should all be perfectly clear.

"The difference between what?" inquired Remus, furrowing his brow.

"Between then and now. It all gets a little mixed up. Past, present, future, they were all the same thing for so long and it's not always easy to tell if I'm remembering something or if it's happening now. Does that make sense?" he finished a little awkwardly.

Remus thought for a moment, trying hard to mask his concern. He knew how Dementors worked. They forced you to relive your past as if it was happening to you all over again. He was familiar with flashbacks, he'd had them before, but to live like that for twelve years? Left alone with nothing but your memories and no way of knowing if it would ever end? No wonder he didn't feel completely tethered to linear existence.

"Yeah, that makes sense."

Sirius breathed a small sigh of relief. "It gets easier the longer I'm out. I'm getting the hang of it again, cause and effect. Glad to know I don't sound completely mad," he said with a laugh.

"No, only a little mad, but that's always been true," Remus joked back.

Sirius was quite for a moment. Thoughtful. When he spoke he seemed hesitant.

"When you walk out here every morning, for a moment I think we're back in London. I keep expecting you to head out to the terrace for a smoke but then you go and start your day with actual food that you cook yourself and I wonder who the hell lives here. Every time I see you I'm shocked you're not twenty, because then I remember that I'm not either and fuck do I hate that."

"Tell me about it. I feel like I need to go out and get a leather jacket just so you look like you again. It's a little better now you've showered and combed your hair. You were always so proud of those locks, it just felt wrong to see it all a mess," said Remus lightheartedly.

They sat in silence for a minute, though this time it was comfortable. Warm. They had actually made mention their shared past without it being instantly horrible.

"Fuck," exclaimed Remus, interrupting the silence.

"What?" asked Sirius with concern.

"Now I want a smoke."

Sirius let out a loud bark of a laugh. "Maybe you haven't changed as much as I thought," he teased.

"Oh shut it. I know how much you hated it."

"I didn't hate it, I just didn't like the smell," said Sirius defensively.

"Are you kidding? You used to comment on it so much it was practically harassment!" Remus declared in indignation, though he couldn't help but smile.

"Fine. I hated it. I could taste it every time we-" Sirius stopped abruptly.

The light atmosphere was instantly replaced with buzzing tension. Remus wanted to tell Sirius it was fine. When he came out that morning, he had planned to at least try and have a real conversation, but now that the topic of their former intimate relationship had been broached, he couldn't think of a single fucking thing to say.

What the fuck were they even supposed to be to each other? Things had been so broken, so thoroughly unresolved when they had parted for the last time before the war ended. They weren't strangers to each other, but Remus had no idea what they were. Friends? Ex's? They'd barley been broken up before everything went to hell and it was difficult for Remus to separate his feelings towards that relationship from his feelings about Sirius' would-be-betrayal. Not to mention the overwhelming guilt that encased the whole thing.

He stood up, scrapping the chair a little behind him.

"I'm going to make a run to the village," he said quietly. "Stock up on some supplies. I'll be back later."

Sirius didn't say anything as Remus headed out the front door.

He didn't come home until the sun was already going down. He'd actually spent a little bit of that time picking up some groceries, but for the most part he had just walked. When he came back, Sirius was sat outside, leaning against a tree a few meters from the shack, watching the setting sun. Buckbeak was asleep over by the veggie patch.

Remus dropped the bag of groceries by the front door and walked over to him. Sirius watched as he sat down beside him, pulling up his knees and resting his arms on them.

"Dumbledore probably wouldn't like you being outside in human form," he said softly.

"Dumbledore can shove off. This place must be warded to hell and back to accommodate your transformations. You always did have a talent for defensive magic."

They were quiet for a beat before Remus took a deep breath, running over the words he'd been rehearsing the past few hours.

"I shouldn't have walked away," he said, prompting Sirius to glance over at him. "I just needed some time to think."

"About what?" asked Sirius, sounding very tired.

"About us. I feel like if I even acknowledge it out loud, that there ever was an 'us,' it's going to create some great, unbearable burden of expectation or obligation or… I honestly don't know. I have no idea. It just feels taboo somehow, like it would shatter the relief of having you back in my life, which is hard to reconcile considering..." he trailed off, still not quite able to break the imaginary taboo and say what they had been to each other.

"Considering that we used to fuck?" Sirius prompted bluntly.

"Considering that we used to be in love. Considering how it ended," said Remus softly.

"After you fucked someone else, you mean?" asked Sirius, though he didn't sound angry as his words would seem to indicate.

Remus looked down at his hands a moment. "Yeah." A beat. "The way we left things was just so awful. I don't want to bring all that pain and resentment back up, but I don't think we can keep pretending it isn't there. I'd like to be friends again, if that's possible."

Remus looked over to Sirius, who was watching him intently.

"I want that too," he said eventually. "I know I was angry at the end. And the beginning and the middle, I suppose. It got all twisted in my head. I have a little more perspective than I did back then. I had a lot of time to think about it," he said bitterly. "I don't see things the same way anymore."

"You had every right to be angry. I… I understand why you thought I could be the traitor. I'd already betrayed your trust, more than once-"

"Stop that. Remus, I was paranoid. Afraid. I had no right to think you could be the spy because you would never, ever be capable of something like that and I knew you well enough that I should have seen it. Out of all the people in the world, I should have seen..."

"I could say the same. I should have known it wasn't you. I should have known, Peter and everything that happened, I- I never understood how you could have done that, but I trusted everyone else when I should have trusted my instincts. Should have trusted you. In the end all I could do was stop thinking about it and accept that it would never make sense to me. Accept I'd never really known you at all" he said, voice dripping with such sincere regret. "I'm so glad I was wrong."

Sirius didn't know how much he'd needed Remus to say that until the moment that he did. "We both made a lot of mistakes. It all seems so small compared to what happened after, even though it felt like the end of the world at the time. If I'd known what I do now you probably could've fucked every man in England and I wouldn't have thought it a big deal," Sirius joked.

"It was Wales, actually."

"Excuse me?"

"You said every man in England, but it was Wales." said Remus completely deadpan.

"You cheated on me with a Welshman?" asked Sirius indignantly. "Connecting with your cultural heritage, were you?"

"No, the location was Wales. The man was Australian."

They stared at each other for a moment before Sirius burst out laughing. Remus followed suit quickly.

"Oh, well that's okay then," said Sirius, still chuckling a little.

There was another silent beat.

"I am sorry, you know. I never wanted to hurt you," said Remus sadly. "I was such a mess back then. I knew what I was doing and I did it anyway. You didn't deserve that."

"It's not like I never hurt you back. It wasn't all bad, though. We loved each other a long time, and I don't just mean when we were together. When I saw you in the Shrieking Shack I wasn't thinking 'funny running into my ex-boyfriend here.' I was thinking that I had spent so many years dreaming of the family that I lost and now that you're with me, I finally have some part of it back," said Sirius, meeting Remus' gaze.

Remus nodded, feeling a lump rising in his throat. "I felt he same thing."

They sat together in silence until the sun had fully retreated and a blanket of stars took its place. After a long time, Remus reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. There were already two smokes missing from his earlier walk. Sirius sighed with mock exasperation.

"Don't give me that. It's your fault for mentioning it," said Remus as he lit up. "It'll only be the one pack then I'm done. Too bloody expensive to keep up these days anyway."

"Moony, after the places I've been, the smell is practically roses. I think I'll cope."

"Thanks for the seal of approval, Pads."