Warnings: language, sex
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Remus is always tired when he comes back from Order trips. He climbs up the stairs to his room and falls onto his bed, and tries to sleep off the wear and tear to his bones. Sirius is there when he wakes up, every time. He always asks how Remus is doing before he asks about anything else, even when Remus can see how much he is desperately, desperately, dying to know what's going on.
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June, 1981
The sounds of shouting, laughter, a broken Muggle fire hydrant spraying water out into the street, were all just barely audible, but their volume increased as Remus opened up the window to let in the summer breeze. It was the first really, unabashedly, hot day of the year, and he had pushed the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. Sirius had collapsed on the couch with his arm over his eyes, all of his limbs splayed and leaking energy out onto the floor.
They hadn't fought in a week. Remus was counting. He had a little calendar in his head and he marked off the safe days with big red X's, loud and glaring and reminding him of all the previous days he'd left blank.
"I think I'm going to France next week," Sirius muttered. Remus lowered himself creakily to the floor by Sirius's head. The full moon was in six days. He could feel it pulling at his joints: he was achy all over, and movement was difficult.
"Have you ever felt just ridiculously old?" he asked all of a sudden. He probably should have been commenting on Sirius's trip—why he was going, the particulars of it, if he would write to Remus or maybe just forget again, like last time, in that perfectly innocent, it-doesn't-mean-anything way. They probably should have been talking about the trip, as Sirius had mentioned it and all. But Remus's head felt heavy where it leaned against the arm of the couch, and he didn't want to think about details at the moment.
"Every time I think about my mother," Sirius answered. "Or the war," he added shortly. Remus wished he hadn't asked. He could almost feel his bones poking out of his skin, slowly ripping holes in him as he got torn apart.
He almost didn't heard Sirius say, "Or us, sometimes."
"Thinking about us makes you feel old?"
Remus frowned slightly, for a moment. He wished the vague wish of impartiality. He wished he was beyond caring what would happen next.
"Only sometimes." He paused. There was a particularly loud shriek of excitement from outside. "When was the last time we had sex, Moony?"
"A week ago."
"When was the last time we had sex without fighting first?"
A hesitation—Sirius felt it just as Remus did.
"I don't know."
Sirius sighed. He let one hand fall—almost accidentally, but Remus could feel the purpose surging through to him—against Remus's shoulder. Remus stared straight ahead. He didn't even turn as he heard Sirius lean up on one elbow, as he felt Sirius kiss gently against his right ear. He leaned more into the second kiss, this one against his mouth.
Sweat had been burning against his skin all morning, as he turned his attention away from the death list in the Prophet, to the rising thermometer and the skyline of the city outside. Sirius was slick with sweat, too; Remus could feel it as they fucked against the hard wooden floor.
It was the same a few days later—same heat, same sweat, same desperation—except this time they were crushed against the dirty white sheets of their bed, and afterwards Sirius just whispered, "I have to go, I have to go," over and over again into Remus's ear until he felt he was in a trance, a perfect trance only broken by Sirius getting up and getting dressed and closing the door with a fatal sort of click behind him. He was on his way to France.
All of their mail was written in secret codes of any number of sorts, and sometimes Remus's mind boggled with the understanding of it. Peter's letters were always rather transparent; he said exactly what he meant, and good thing they were never intercepted, Remus mused. James wrote to say that he and Lily might have found a new place to live, though of course he couldn't give a location, and when Remus went to visit him, he added that there were other witches and wizards there, too, all hiding out.
"It might be just the place for us," he said.
Lily asked Remus, politely at first, to stay for some tea, but Remus insisted that he had to go. He walked to the front hallway, his head beginning to ache, and she followed him.
"What is going on?" she whispered, her voice almost a hiss. "You don't seem like yourself. Are you ill?"
"Almost the moon," he answered, and tried to smile, but she shook her head.
"It's more than that."
He had to close his eyes for a moment, and rub his hands against the lids. "No, it's not. I'm fine, I swear. Go back to James. I'm fine."
She wanted to insist—he could tell—but she couldn't. Harry was crying in the back of the house.
Sirius returned the day after the full moon. The flat was abandoned. Remus was lying in St. Mungo's, half dead.
"I feel fucking old, now," he whispered, when Sirius found him. His skin was paler than the crisp white hospital sheets that he lay on, and there were deep, red, claw marks against his arms, still glistening, it seemed to Sirius, with blood. He couldn't look at Remus's face. He could only stare at the most visible of the wounds that marred his bruised and broken body.
"Really? You look young." Sirius's voice was hoarse and low. His face was dark, and his hands kept clenching together. "You scared the shit out of me," he added. "The flat was completely empty. I didn't know where the hell you were."
"If someone hadn't found me, I'd be dead."
"Don't say that." He sounded more angry than upset when he spoke.
"I'm not going to lie to you, Sirius."
He had closed his eyes, the effort of even a few words draining him, but he could hear the scrape of the heavy hospital chair as Sirius stood up. "No Moony," he answered, dark and solemn as ever, his presence thick and heavy over Remus's bed. "You never lie."
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end part 6/10