A/N: Ladies and gentlemen, we are done. Thank you, dear readers, for, um, reading... And thank you Izzie for inspiring me so.

This is the first collection that I can ever mark as Complete, did you know that? And it's all for you, Iz.

I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.

10. bossy

My knees are bent
like the corner of a page;
I am saving your place.

The space between them tingles with the echo of silence and discomfort.

"Sirius, please don't leave your fucking clothes on the floor," Remus barks, and the tension dies. It's like twelve years have melted away and Sirius laughs. The sound is desperate to his ears.

Remus watches him, a small smile on his lips.

"Welcome home, Padfoot," he whispers, and Sirius' heart soars.

"I've missed you," Sirius says, and his eyes are stinging embarrassingly, his face is flushed. His voice is a hollow growl that echoes in the distance between them.

He wants to say I love you but it's been far, far too long. So instead he just takes Remus by the hand and runs his fingertips along the veins that stick out there. These hands are older than he remembers.

"Perhaps you have not changed as much as I, Sirius," Remus says quietly, "But there are things that you do not know about me anymore. I am not the boy you left. I am not a boy, Padfoot. I am an old man. But you... I wonder if you have changed at all."

He pulls his hand from Sirius grasp and drops his gaze to the floor, and Sirius wants to laugh at how his cheeks are red and flushed.

"Remus," Sirius pleads, desperate for Remus to look at him, "I have changed. I have changed so very much that I'm afraid I'm not even me anymore and then how can - how-," he stutters, feeling young and clumsy. "How can you love me?" he finishes.

"How indeed..." Remus murmurs, and shakes his head slowly. "I don't know anymore, Sirius. Can I? We are different people to the Padfoot and Moony that we used to be."

"Are we though, Moony?" Sirius asks, ignoring how Remus flinches at his old nickname. "You are still as bossy, still as kind, still as bloody sensible as my Moony. And I am still as bitter, still as lost, still as fucked upas when you first met me. Perhaps even more so."

"But?" Remus prompts.

"But I am stronger. I spent too many nights sitting in that cell to be anything but strong," Sirius says, and the note of begging in his voice does not go unnoticed by either man. Sirius' voice drops. "I'll kill him, Moony. I'll kill him."

"Sirius," Remus sighs. "Now is not the time. Just, please, tell me what we should do. I'm too tired to think."

He rests his weary head his hands. Sirius watches how his forehead creases, how is eyelids are lined, how very old his Moony has become.

"We should be in love," Sirius says simply. Remus' head snaps up at how honest, how scared, how very young Sirius sounds.

He looks at Sirius for a moment that stretches into years - twelve long, long years- and Sirius can see the debate alive in his eyes. Remus breathes slowly and deliberately, but he reaches back out for Sirius' hand.

"We should be," Remus says finally. His fingers are shaking.

Sirius exhales loudly, a breath he didn't even know he was holding. He has waited twelve long years for this. He pulls Remus close. When their lips meet, Sirius' chest is warm and light, his skin is on fire, his lips burning against Remus'.

"I've missed you," Sirius whispers again, because he needs to.

"Stay," Remus croaks, his voice scratchy and desperate. "Please. Don't leave again."

And then he is wrapped around Sirius again and they are alive, they are lovers, they are not-so-young but they are happy, even if just for a moment.

I will, Sirius thinks, I'll stay.

He does not say it out loud, because he is certain that, at that moment, Remus knows.

Remus always knows.