"Pads, you're getting it everywhere!"
"I'm doing it exactly how you showed me!" exclaimed Sirius as he raised his hands to his eyes to shield them from the cloud of flour he had just kicked up.
Remus grabbed the beater from his hand, switching it off. He started laughing as the chaos settled to reveal Sirius with a face full of powder and white staining his shirt.
"This is why I never wanted to live in the country, Moony! Can't get any bloody takeout. Have to do everything for ourselves," he grumbled, brushing off his clothes.
"Why don't you leave this to me. Go back to your little craft project," teased Remus.
"Craft project?" said Sirius indignantly. "I'm fixing your leaky roof! How you live like this is beyond me."
"Up until a few weeks ago you lived in a fucking cave!" exclaimed Remus.
"And I kept it very nice I'll have you know," said Sirius.
Remus rolled his eyes affectionately. "I'm rubbish with those domestic spells, you know that. Why do you think all my clothes are in such shit condition?"
Sirius rolled his eyes back. "Have you ever considered using your actual hands? You learned how to bake, a revelation I'm yet to recover from, by the way. You couldn't learn how to use a hammer?"
"I was getting to it," said Remus sheepishly. "I'm still fairly new at this whole thing, really. I mean, dad tried to teach me, but I just never took to it. Not like you did. Besides, compared to some of the places I've lived this is a luxury," he added with a slight grimace.
Sirius stilled at that. Remus had talked a lot about his year at Hogwarts since they had reunited. Told him everything about his time with Harry, and when he ran out of those stories, he moved onto all his other students. Sirius had been struck by how much he seemed to genuinely care about them all. He remembered little details, made connections. He didn't say it himself, but Sirius got the impression that the students had been quite fond of him. Why else would so many of them have sought him out for help and advice?
They had even talked a little bit about their time before the end of the last war. A little. Not a lot.
He never talked about the years in between. Any time Sirius so much as hinted at asking, Remus would find a way to cheerily and swiftly change the topic.
"What other places?" Sirius asked casually, trying very hard to sound like he wasn't fascinated to hear the answer.
Remus, who had taken over Sirius' mixing of the cake batter, stiffened slightly at the question.
"What do you mean?" he asked pleasantly.
"What other places have you lived? You said you haven't been here long," said Sirius, moving over to sit at the table nonchalantly
"Oh, well I moved here after Hogwarts," said Remus, still pleasant even as his grip tightened on the mixer. "I didn't have many expenses that year and the salary was quite good. Land is cheap out here so I managed to buy it outright."
Remus stopped mixing and moved to pour the batter into the prepared baking pan. He felt Sirius' eyes on him.
So far they had both largely refrained from pushing each other on the past. Sirius mentioned his time in Azkaban sometimes, but Remus never pressured him to say more about it than he wanted. He simply listened. Tried to help him through his mood swings and his bad days, when he seemed to be almost entirely untethered from his sense of time and place. Sirius had seemed fairly willing to oblige Remus' desire to keep the past in the past, though he suspected that this wouldn't last forever. Sirius was a curious man, and not always a patient one.
"Alright. But what about before Hogwarts? Were you in London still?" asked Sirius, a little more insistently this time.
"Sure, for a bit. Did you still want to fix the roof, then, or do you want to find something else to do today?" he asked with a tight smile.
"It's not really fair, is it," said Sirius offhandedly. "I was really only doing the one thing for twelve years and you know exactly what it was. Why do you get to shroud your life in mystery?"
There was no bitterness behind the words, just the emptiness that Sirius always felt when he dwelled too long on all the lives that people got to live while he rotted in a cell. The slightly sickening knowledge that the world continued on without him.
Remus' face fell. He stopped in place, not able to find words. It was only at that moment that Sirius realized he had voiced that last thought out loud. He was so used to being alone he sometimes didn't register the difference between his thoughts and his words.
"Sorry," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to say that."
Remus hesitated a second before walking over to the table and sitting across from Sirius. He fidgeted awkwardly but met Sirius' gaze straight on.
"You're right. It's not fair-" "Remus, it's fine-" "Sirius, please, it's alright." Remus took a breath. "I couldn't stay in London after what happened, so I headed to Scotland. Lived in Edinburgh for about two years before I got sick of it. After that I just left the UK entirely until I was twenty-nine. I never really stayed anywhere longer than a year. Mostly around Western and Southern Europe, but I spent about six months in New York," he said with a small, almost apologetic smile.
Sirius had always wanted to go to New York. So much of the music they both loved came out of that city.
"Why did you come back?"
Remus spoke slowly, as if he was carefully considering every word. As if each sentence were an unpleasant task to be performed.
"I spent a long time trying to get away from everything that happened in England. Eventually I got a bit sick of running. It was exhausting. I figured if I wanted to deal with it I had to, well, actually deal with it. It… didn't go as well as I'd hoped," he said softly, his left hand drifting across his right forearm almost subconsciously, a movement that Sirius caught and filed away for later. "Not at first. I sort of figured it out eventually. Realized I needed to get away from the city. Somewhere quiet, isolated. At least for a while. So that's what I did. I was out around Somerset when Dumbledore came knocking and offered me a job. Now I own this place. It's nice to know that even if times get tough at least I can't be evicted," he finished with a small laugh.
Sirius felt that there was an awful lot that was glossed over in that little rundown of events. He couldn't help feeling a pang of jealousy.
Remus got to travel. To explore. To avoid his bad memories and deal with them at a time of his choosing rather than live every moment in them for twelve fucking years. He got to grow, to live.
Is that why he was so avoidant? He didn't want to upset Sirius. Didn't want to rub it in his face, everything he'd missed.
"Sounds like you've had an interesting life," Sirius commented quietly.
Remus smiled a little uncomfortably. "I suppose you could say that."
They were silent for a moment. Sirius debated pushing, but truthfully, he didn't think he could stand to hear anymore.
"Are you going to finish that cake or are we just going to starve, then?" Sirius joked with a short laugh that sounded rather insincere.
Remus nodded, looking putt off as he stood up, making his way over to the tiny kitchen. Sirius watched him work. His leg was bouncing up and down at an increasingly rapid pace. His head was starting to feel light as it buzzed with a thousand thoughts and images.
What else had he missed? What else had Remus seen and done and lived, fucking lived while Sirius had been locked away? While Harry had been locked away with those awful people?
No. He shook away that thought, not for the first time. That was Dumbledore's fault. It was Dumbledore who put him there, left him there. Who left Sirius in prison without so much as a trial while Remus got to traipse around the world and learn all sorts of new skills and be happy.
He wouldn't talk about his life because he pitied him, just like everyone else. Like Dumbledore, like the others he had gone to see before coming here.
Sirius pushed the table forward violently as he stood up, causing an empty mug on the table to fall and shatter on the ground. He was breathing heavily. Remus spun around to face him, wide eyed with shock and, much to Sirius' disgust, concern.
They stared at each other a moment, Sirius' fists balled by his side. He turned away and headed straight for the front door.
Remus stepped around the kitchen bench, trying to follow.
"Sirius! What are you doing?" he called out in confusion.
"Going for a walk," he said as he yanked the door open.
"Off the property? I don't think-"
Sirius rounded on him. "I've been on the run for two years, you think I can't handle myself? I'll transform, I'm not completely fucking inept!"
Remus raised his hands in a placating gesture. He stepped back, recognizing that Sirius was going to do whatever he wanted right now. Sirius left in a flurry, slamming the door closed behind him. As soon as he hit the property line, he took the form of Padfoot and headed off down the country road at a sprint.
By the time he came back, Remus was working anxiously in the garden, not paying any attention to the task at hand. He had been making his way steadily through his cigarettes and was, much to his frustration, down to the final one in the pack. He was alerted to Sirius' presence before he could see him as Buckbeak stood up from where he lay lazily on the ground and excitedly trotted up to greet Sirius.
Remus watched as the black dog approached, transforming back into his old friend. Sirius stroked Buckbeak's beak in greeting. Remus was glad. He was about an hour away from going out to search for him.
After a moment, he looked over to Remus. Much to his surprise, Sirius smiled apologetically at him. He wandered over, seemingly much calmer than when he'd left. Remus stood up, throwing down his gardening tools and dropping his smoke, which he ground out with his shoe.
"Sorry about that," Sirius said as he approached. "Didn't mean to freak out on you."
"Don't mention it," Remus replied, relieved that they apparently weren't fighting.
Remus thought for a moment that Sirius was about to offer some further explanation or continue his previous line of questioning about Remus' past. Instead he just offered another smile and headed back towards the shack.
Buckbeak curled back up in his position in the shade, returning to his rest. Remus knelt back down to continue his gardening, glad to have a distraction from the mess of thoughts swimming around his head.
