My lover is
greedy
all eyes and mouth
my lover is tumbling with me
down and down and down
sunken eyes and yellow teeth and
I feel his ribs
my lover is (real)
here
alive
My lover is here, is here is here is here
"You've changed." he says, afterwards, with his back to Sirius. The dark-haired man just shakes his shaggy head. Leans over, puts a warm hand on the small of Remus' pale back, lets it sit there a moment.
"Guess I could say the same." is the reply, though he refrains from spelling it out. There's more silence now, where words would have sparkled between them, sunlight on a brook. The truth is, Sirius feels changed, watching his friend rise stiffly, shuffle over to the wardrobe, pull on faded trousers; all without speaking. Moony was always this silent, this patient. Moony was always this way.
He knows he's being watched.
"I wasn't always this way, you know."
"Yes, you were."
"No." he sits on the corner of the bed, eyes kind and humorless. "I laughed more."
"True."
There's a pause as they search for discarded clothes, and Remus refuses to let him put his tattered, grease-stained jumper back on, replacing it with one of his own. "They're going to know it's yours." Sirius warns tiredly, and sudden, foreign anger flickers in the other's eyes.
"What the hell do I care ?"
"Guess you don't." he says, and feels something warm blossoming in his chest.
They go downstairs together, one after another, and Sirius restrains himself from sliding down the banister rail. It's hard to remember how to behave. All he has are ten years of imagining himself back at school, back on the street, back buying muggle joke records and cleaning his teeth with a real toothbrush and dammit, imagining Moony. His face when he waltzes through the door, name cleared; his face when he kisses him again after two years (two years that became four, that became seven, ten, and twelve, twelve, a lifetime). "Thanks for letting me stay here. With you. Even though, you know." he blurts out, awkwardly grateful and uneasy. Remus looks at him blankly, then collapses into a kitchen chair, face in hands.
"God." he mutters. "God. Am I really that awful ?" He looks up, shopworn and horrified into clarity. "Look, I'm not having you here because… it's not like that. I don't want you, as you were. I just want you." And he wonders, in that instant, if he's gone and done it, if he's ruined it, if it's over. If that feeble apology could be enough.
That craggy face splits into a grin, and for a moment Remus can see the boy inside, and then back to the man. For the first time, he can honestly say which one he likes better. Which one he needs, now.
"That's good." Sirius the man says; and it's enough.