Previously in the Darklyverse: Peter and Emmeline started dating. Sirius and Remus deepened their physical relationship, but it was one-sided. Emmeline and Sirius reconnected as friends at work at Scrivenshaft's.

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October 23rd, 1978: Sirius Black

Emmeline shows up at Scrivenshaft's that morning only to announce to Sirius that she and Peter have started dating. "He's still my best friend first, but yeah, we're… yeah. This is happening, I guess."

"You don't sound very happy about it," says Sirius gently.

"I am!" Emmeline hastens to say. "I am happy. It's just unexpected, that's all. Even a week ago, I never would have guessed that Peter and I were going to be a thing."

"In all fairness, you and Peter have been a thing for a while now," he points out. "It may not have been a physical thing, but you've been really, really close for a pretty long time now."

"I think that's what's so jarring—I got used to our relationship being a certain way, and maybe there were undertones of this back before, but I was used to not acting on them, anyway. Now there's all this new stuff we have to navigate, and I don't know how any of it works."

He smiles. "You'll get there. If you're happy, then I'm happy for you." He thinks about how far they've come—talking to each other about their partners like the wound from fourth year has almost scabbed over. "I really am."

"You and Remus seem good," she says now, straining a little to reach the top of a shelf. "That's good, right?"

"Oh, we're fine, thanks." He considers telling her the truth, but he doesn't want to start up a big conversation about his sex life while he's at work, and he doesn't know if Remus would appreciate Sirius spreading word of their problems around to their other friends.

It's not that things are bad between him and Remus. He's happy, Remus seems to be happy, and Sirius feels like they're doing a good job communicating their needs to each other. The only thing that's difficult is the sex, and even with that, Sirius feels like he shouldn't be complaining, since he's the one who's on the receiving end of everything.

But that's just it: it's Sirius who's on the receiving end of everything. Remus swears he doesn't mind not getting anything back, that he doesn't want to make Sirius uncomfortable and that he's perfectly content to go without if that's what Sirius needs. But Sirius doesn't feel right taking and never giving back, even if he is pretty grossed out at the thought of reciprocating. He's even offered to try to return things, increasingly often over the last couple of months, and Remus keeps turning him down, and Sirius feels like he's running out of options for ways to show Remus he cares and make them equals within this relationship.

They're making out at Sirius's flat that night when Remus goes to undo Sirius's robes, and he puts a hand on Remus's to stop him. "I don't want anything," he says, even though he's literally aching for it.

"But Sirius—"

"We should stop doing this. If you can't get any, then I shouldn't be getting any, either."

"But Padfoot, I don't mind. I just want to be with you in whatever way I can."

"But you deserve it. Doesn't it bother you that I can't give you that?"

Remus flops down next to him and sighs. "It's not how I would have done it if I got to choose, but it doesn't work that way. Why can't this be enough? Why does it have to be perfect for us to have it?"

"I don't need it to be perfect, Moony, but I need to know I'm not holding you back by trapping you in some kind of—"

"First of all, you're not trapping me. Also, it's not like I feel this way about anybody else in my life, and I don't even know anybody else who's gay, so it's not like you're standing in the way of me getting laid a whole bunch."

"And what happens when you do meet someone? You're going to turn them down for me when I can't even give you—?"

"Unlikely," says Remus, "but yeah, I would. You mean too much to me. And I'm getting really tired of having this conversation over and over."

"Then just let me—"

"No, you just let me do this my way. I don't want you to do things and them not mean the same thing to you as they do to me."

"Well, maybe we shouldn't—"

"Shouldn't what? Be together? Like that's somehow better than this?"

Sirius says, "At least if we broke up I wouldn't be such a constant disappointment to you."

"Padfoot, the only disappointed person I see here is you. If you really want to let me down, then leave."

Sirius sucks in a breath. He doesn't think Remus really meant that, but what if he did? Would it be better for both of them to split up? At least that way they wouldn't stay trapped in this same cycle forever. It seems to him that Remus is only comfortable doing things the way they've already been doing them, while Sirius himself is feeling increasingly uncomfortable not making the change, and he doesn't know how to reconcile that, doesn't have any idea how to make this fight stop happening over and over and over again.

"I don't know how much longer we can want opposite things and not fall apart," Sirius says finally.

"So that's what we're going to do, then? We're going to—to fall apart?"

"I don't know. No. Maybe."

Remus looks stricken. "I can't be with somebody who's holding the possibility of a breakup over my head to get his way," he says, and Sirius—

"I'm not holding anything over your head! Do you really think I'm that manipulative? After all the bullshit my family has pulled, and how hard I've worked to not turn out like them—"

"Of course I don't, but—"

"Maybe you're right. Maybe it is time for us to split."

Remus scoots back a few centimeters away from Sirius on the bed. "So that's it, then? We're really doing this?"

"I think we're doing this."

"Right. Well… I'll just be going, then," says Remus.

It only takes Remus a minute to gather himself up and Disapparate, and Sirius can barely hold it together until Remus leaves before his emotions totally overcome him. He punches the drywall so hard that he breaks through it, white flecks flying everywhere, and of course he can't seem to then pull it back out of the wall. "Lily?" he hollers, hoping she's still in the living room and not off to visit James.

A moment later, she comes rushing in and takes stock of Sirius's fist stuck in the wall. "It's my wand hand," he says sheepishly. "And I can't get it out. Can you use a Reductor Curse so I can get free?"

"I—yeah, of course. Let me go grab my wand." In the thirty seconds or so that she's gone, he feels like he's on the brink of tears, but then Lily returns and he pulls himself together enough to be presentable.

"Be careful with your aim," says Sirius, and Lily barks out a laugh.

"Reducto."

He pulls his fist free, flexing it: it's a little bloodied up, and his knuckles are stained red. "Episkey. Reparo."

"Thanks," he mutters, abashed.

"Can I ask why you decided to put your first through a wall? And where's Remus?"

"We broke up," says Sirius simply.

Lily's face twists into an expression of sympathy and surprise. "I'm so sorry, Sirius. I didn't realize you two were having problems."

"Neither did I," he says, "or at least, I didn't think the problems we were having were big enough to break up over."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He really, really doesn't. He may not be attracted to Remus's body, but he sure did love him—the way Remus laughs and talks and kisses, and everything Remus loved in Sirius and reflected back to him. Sirius feels totally blindsided. It's like he and Remus were in this perfect and perfectly insulated bubble, and now it's popped, and reality is falling down all around him amidst the scraps.

Did he ever even tell Remus that he was in love with him? Does Remus have any idea how much Sirius is going to miss him? Worse—is their friendship doomed forever now? Are they not even going to get that back now that they've tried to surpass it and failed?

Lily and Remus apparently make short work of spreading the news around, because by the time Sirius shows up at work the next morning, Emmeline already knows that he and Remus broke up. Sirius is a little embarrassed: literally just yesterday he was telling Em that he and Remus were fine, and now look what's happened. "I'm really sorry," she says while he's counting all the money in the till before they open up the shop to customers. "If I knew what I could do to help, I would do it."

"That's okay. It's not your fault."

"Do you mind if I ask—?"

"I really don't want to talk about it, if that's all right."

"Of course, yeah. Sorry," says Emmeline.

Possibly the worst part of it isn't about Remus at all: it's that Sirius has an old, old habit of burying his problems with sex, and the pain of losing Remus makes him want to find somebody, anybody, to come onto. But Emmeline is with Peter now, and he doesn't want to put Marlene through that again, not after they tried so hard to treat each other better in sixth and seventh years. He's not going to resort to finding somebody like, say, Veronica Smethley just to ice a wound so cold it burns on contact, and anyway, he shouldn't be cruising for girls instead of dealing with his problems to begin with.

But what is Sirius supposed to do to deal with his problems? What does anybody do besides try and fail not to think about them?

He and Lily are hosting the orb this week, though, so that at least means he has something to put his mind on and has the potential to blow up some Death Eaters every night. Remus had signed up to do orb duty with him for most of the week, but to Sirius's mingled disappointment and relief, he ends up swapping with James, who joins Sirius and Lily and Benjy Fenwick every evening to shoot the shit until any situation that may arise.

He's glad he has Benjy there with him because being around the happy couple on his own might be too much for Sirius to take right now. It's not that Lily and James are so affectionate—they tone it down to a reasonable level in others' company—but notwithstanding Lily's mixed signals back in sixth year, they are relationship goals and it just serves to remind Sirius that he doesn't get to have what they have. He didn't get to have it with Marlene or even Emmeline, and now he doesn't get to have it with Remus, and it's not like Sirius's ultimate goal in life involves being married, but why doesn't he get to be close to the people he lives? Why does something or other, sooner or later, rip them apart?

Out in the field, the Death Eaters they encounter are getting better at dueling, to the point that the Order is making hardly a capture a week. Sirius wonders whether they're actually training their new initiates to fight or whether they're just sending more experienced mid-level operatives out on missions. Either way, it means that the raids he goes on this week only serve to ratchet up Sirius's frustration even higher, and by Sunday when they pass the orb on to Jaime Raywood, he's sort of glad to be rid of the damn thing and off duty for the next couple of weeks.

This, of course, leaves Sirius at home alone with his thoughts in the evenings, and it's starting to make him almost miss the endless Death Eater duels that go nowhere. Lily spends most evenings at James's place at this point, which also means she's seeing Remus every night, and as much as Sirius wants to ask her how Remus is doing, he bites his tongue. He doesn't want Lily to know how badly he misses Remus, and he certainly doesn't want word about it to circulate back to Remus somehow.

If loss is a competition, Sirius is going to see to it that he wins.