Sirius was not having a good day. He just. He didn't want to get out of bed. Couldn't, more like.
"So don't," said Remus.
"That is not what you are meant to say to me," Sirius groaned into his pillow.
"Oh?" Remus asked, amused. "And why not?"
"Because," Sirius said, again to his pillow. Remus, who knew this routine, didn't prod him to say anything more. He simply stretched back out in the bed and cloaked Sirius' body with his own. He nuzzled his face into Sirius' neck and batted his eyelashes a couple of times. He knew Sirius liked the way it felt when the delicate hairs whispered against the sensitive skin of his nape.
As expected, Sirius released a long sigh. His back, rigid against Remus' chest, relaxed by a few degrees.
"Because," Sirius tried again, "you're meant to tell me to buck up and get out there, and not be selfish or let people down or spoil our plans or — or —" He interrupted himself with a trailing sort of yawn. "You should tell me that I have to get out of bed."
"What I think" — Remus paused to press a kiss to Sirius' exposed shoulder — "is that" — another kiss, a bit higher — "you ought to rest" — another — "and forget all that shite" — one last kiss found its way home right behind Sirius' ear.
Sirius rolled over then, so that he was nose to nose with Remus. They were so close that they each went slightly cross-eyed in an effort to keep the other in focus. Remus could smell Sirius' stale morning breath. He wouldn't change a thing.
Or, perhaps he would change one small thing. He cuddled just a tiny bit closer, and lightly touched the tip of his nose to Sirius'. His face at an angle, his eyelashes brushed against Sirius' cheekbone. Sirius sighed again.
"You're the one who had the moon last week, not me," Sirius grumbled. "'M being pathetic." A piece of dark hair came loose from his messy sleeping bun and fell across his eyes. He blew out between his lips like a grumpy horse, which accomplished nothing but fanning the strand out to cover more of his face.
"Hmm, your logic would be sound," Remus said as he lifted a hand to stroke the hair back behind Sirius' ear. "If that were remotely how anything worked." He kept his hand in Sirius' hair, stroking his thumb back and forth across the soft skin hiding in the valley between jaw and ear.
"That is how things work!" Sirius exclaimed. The best way to get a rise out of Sirius always had been to contradict him. Nothing got him going like a perceived slight on his intelligence. "You broke four bloody ribs last week!"
"And what did I do then?"
Sirius rolled his eyes. "I know where this is going, you lynx."
Remus gave a gasp of mock surprise. "I thought I was a werewolf! Has something changed?"
Sirius rolled his eyes yet more impressively. "I am not falling for this again."
"Falling for what?" Remus asked, the picture of innocence.
Sirius rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "You're trying to get me to say that when you broke your ribs, you laid in bed all day and listened to Madam Pomfrey and took your potions like a good boy. And that I ought to do the same until I feel less like a pile of half-thawed wintertime dog shite."
"Clever as always, you," Remus said. He was sitting up against the pillows now, but he reached down to run a finger gently up Sirius' nose and between his eyebrows. Sirius closed his eyes at the sensation. "You are precisely correct."
"But you're wrong!" Sirius said, his eyes flying back open. "Me being a moody bugger has nothing in common with you trying to rip yourself in two once a month."
"I think you'll find most healers disagree," Remus replied. "Or, the smart ones, at least. And I think — although you must correct me if I'm wrong — that the clinical term tends not to be 'moody bugger'."
"Ha bloody ha."
"Love," Remus whispered, earnest now. "Of course we are different. We struggle with different things. But at the end of the day, we each sometimes find ourselves at less than one hundred percent. And when that happens, it's alright — it's imperative, actually — that we give ourselves a break. Just until things get easier again."
Sirius grumbled again, low in his throat. Halfway to Padfoot, really.
Remus brushed his hand across Sirius' forehead once more, and then swung his legs around so that his feet were once more on the floor. He grabbed his wand from the bedside table.
"I'm going to go make some toast," he said, "and put on the kettle. And then I'll come back, alright? And we can rest a bit together."
"What about James' thing?"
"James will understand."
"What about the Order meeting?"
The war was over, but the Order still met every other week. In theory, it was to help with the rebuild. In truth, they mostly just sat and drank and remembered.
Usually, the remembering did them good.
Other times, not so much.
"I'll go to that, and if there's anything important I'll let you know. Or we can go together. It's not until eight. You might feel differently by then."
"Doubt it," Sirius said.
"Alright, then I'll go and report back. But we don't have to decide about that yet. It's not for another thirteen hours."
Sirius said nothing. He was still staring up at the ceiling. Glowering, more like. Nothing made him grumpier than the feeling that he was missing the action.
"I'll be right back," Remus said.
He walked from the room without waiting for a reply. As he crossed the short hallway that led to their tiny kitchen, he flicked his wand. By the time he entered the kitchen, the toast was already in the toaster and the kettle was filling itself at the sink. With another wave of his wand, the stove ignited and the kettle settled itself on the lower left burner. It was the only one that still worked.
Remus hummed "Odo the Hero" as he waited for the water to heat. When the toast popped from the toaster, he levitated it onto a plate. The tea, however, he poured into the mugs by hand. Sirius preferred it done the muggle way, and swore up and down that he could taste the difference. He certainly always guessed correctly when Remus tried to fool him, although Remus suspected that that had more to do with how good Sirius was at reading him.
When the breakfast tray was ready, he carried it carefully the short distance back to their bedroom. Sirius had not moved an inch. He was still doing his best to assassinate the light fixture with his eyes.
"Toast, Pads?" Remus asked.
"No," he replied.
"Tea?"
Sirius finally turned to look at him. "That depends."
Remus smiled. "Yes, I poured it by hand. Put the milk in first, too. I know how you like it."
Sirius quirked his eyebrows in a ghost of his usual teasing look. It was enough to warm Remus' belly more thoroughly than any tea could have, regardless.
"We'll just have to see about that," Sirius said, his voice rough.
Remus returned to the bed and to the warmth of Sirius.
The tea passed muster, as he had known it would. And Sirius ate his share of the toast after all.
It was not a perfect morning. But it was a perfectly good one, just the same.
He and Sirius had had all sorts of mornings together.
They were sure to discover many, many more.