Remus is surprised that Sirius still has the energy to pick these petty fights. He himself has long ago given up arguing, tried to give up the past along with it. They have all slighted each other, at one time or another.

x

May, 1981

It started with small fights, back when summer was still new. Sirius would leave the window open. Remus would forget to lock the door. One or the other would ignore various, small chores.

Remus told himself that it was just stress, or the war, or the stress of the war, or any combination of a million other things. He knew the why didn't matter that much, though. It could have been the weather, and the way it was always raining, even though when he was younger he would run through summer rain—the warm air and cool water and damp earth smell—and let the raindrops hit his new scars, take away their itch.

It could have been the war. Yes, the mounting casualty rate, the Dark Marks that burned the sky, the fear. It was the acrid smell of death that followed them everywhere that kept them both so on the edge.

James sat on the carpet of his third flat in three months. He had the real estate section of the Prophet open in front of him, eyes scanning behind his glasses, hair falling across his face, messy and ragged. The important thing, Dumbledore had said, was to keep moving. Eventually, a safe place would be found, more permanent, easier.

"The easier part is just a lie," Sirius growled that night, as he pulled his shirt over his head roughly and flung it across the room. Remus cowered from his sudden rage, but tried not to let it show.

"Just a fucking lie," Sirius repeated. "The whole thing. So that they think they're safe even though they're not."

Outside, the sky was burning.

It took Remus many moments to speak; he stood still, sensing, as the wolf did, when danger was at its height and when it was about to pass.

"The important thing," he said, "is to keep them as close to safe as possible."

"As close to safe…fucking heaven, Moony, that makes no sense."

Even when they fought, he called Remus Moony, as if they were still kids. Even when everything disintegrated, Sirius was the master of keeping old feelings alive when they should have long ago been dead.

The next morning there were three different papers spread out across the tabletop and a letter from Peter, to say he would back soon from his journey, and no worries. Peter was so naïve that it hurt. Remus half-wanted to crumple the letter up and throw it away, but Sirius was slouching into the room and into the chair across from him, and he wanted even more to ask what happened to the dishes.

"They're in the sink, Remus, don't have a heart attack about it."

"I was only asking, Sirius." They said each other's names like they were curses. "You were supposed to wash them."

"I got distracted. The whole trying-not-to-be-killed-on-my-way-home thing. It really gets a bloke tired."

Remus's voice was so tired, had been so tired from the very start, and Sirius, he could already tell, with the weariness of habit, was just trying to pick a fight with him again.

"It takes five seconds to say the spell, you know."

"Then you could have done it."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?" Sirius smashed the Hogsmeade Herald down against the tabletop abruptly and glared. Remus was waiting for him. He had been waiting for him from the start.

"The point is that we're not letting this place go to hell just because—"

"Just because there's a war going on?" Sirius always had that way, that way of making Remus feel like dirt with just one stare, that way of making everything insignificant merely for not being about him. "That seems like a bloody good reason for us all to go to hell."

"Dammit, Sirius, I'm not going to let that happen and neither are you."

Remus always got angry in spurts, in sudden bursts of rage he'd been gleaning, and he yelled the last words with such volume that even Sirius flinched for a second. Remus could feel his anger coiling up inside of him, and he stood up sharply, only half hoping it would pass. Sirius stood up, too, his eyes narrowed and his hands in sharp fists at his sides, a defensive stance, as if he'd been expecting this all along.

"We are not making this a hell on earth for ourselves, don't you understand?" Remus growled. "We're going to keep our lives going so that when it does end—"

He had wanted to say "so that when it does end, there'll be something left for us," but when he looked at Sirius's face, and the mad man gleam to his eyes, and the way his fingernails were digging into the skin of the heels of his palms, the words died on his lips. Maybe it was just a wild, unrealistic hope that there would be even a scrap left in the end.

"When it does end, what?"

He faltered. Dammit. Never let him see your fear.

"They were just fucking dishes, Sirius."

"You brought them up."

Remus's voice was slowing, but Sirius's was still a bark, sharp and hard like a gunshot.

"This is our life now, Moony. This war is our life. It comes first. We have to make sure we win; we have to make sure we get what we want." He narrowed his eyes and anger sparked and crackled around him, static, lightning.

"What I want is my old life back."

"That's bullshit. You're just afraid."

Only of you. Dammit.

"And you're too damned selfish to give a fuck about anybody else."

Sirius just shook his head. Their fights weren't violent, but they were filled with anger so seething and so powerful, it blew up in unexpected ways.

"Fuck you, Moony," he whispered, and then walked just one step closer, and in a burst pushed the table and its papers over, and screamed the words again without the old name at the end.

It was how it always seemed to end--an overflow of useless rage. And then at night Remus would go to bed alone, and Sirius would go out, and when he came back it was past midnight and Remus was halfway to asleep, but not quite. He was awake enough to hear the slow footsteps, the quiet clicking of the door when it shut, the whisper that seemed to be right in his ears though said from faraway. "Moony."

"Padfoot."

"I don't want to talk."

And they didn't. They never did. Sirius's sudden weight on the bed brought Remus sitting up and grabbing at his shoulders, lips not really kisses, but bites.

x

end part 5/10