Chapter 2
"The Killing Moon" – Echo & The Bunnymen
Fate / Up against your will / Through the thick and thin / He will wait until / You give yourself to him
The train groaned as it slowed, metal on metal echoing through the walls of the compartment like it was trying to hold itself together.
The lights flickered once, then steadied into a pale, artificial glow.
The world outside the window had shifted from nameless fields to something vaguely urban—buildings slouched under streetlights, a few signs flickering in tired neon. Midnight or later. The station looked almost empty.
Sirius sat up slowly.
He hadn’t meant to fall into that half-sleep, hadn’t meant to let his thoughts drift that far out. But the motion, the silence, the presence of someone else who didn’t ask anything of him—it had disarmed him in ways he didn’t like admitting.
Remus still hadn’t moved.
The compartment was quieter now, almost too quiet without the clatter of the tracks underneath. The engine hummed beneath the floor.
Somewhere, a bell rang.
Sirius glanced at Remus, who hadn’t so much as blinked. Still seated, still slouched, still staring out the window like it held some kind of answer.
They could stay.
Ride the train until it threw them off.
But Sirius felt something tightening in his chest, some pressure he couldn’t name.
He didn’t want to stay seated too long.
Didn’t want the quiet to turn into something that felt like goodbye.
So he stood. Brushed off his jacket. Slung his bag over one shoulder.
"You getting off?" he asked, voice rough from too many cigarettes and not enough sleep.
Remus’s eyes flicked up.
Just a moment.
Just a look.
Then he stood.
That was all.
The station smelled like wet cement and old electricity. The overhead lights buzzed like they were straining to keep the dark back. The platform was mostly empty—just one old guy hunched over a vending machine, kicking it with vague desperation, and a young woman pacing with a phone held to her ear like it was a lifeline.
Sirius stepped off the train first.
Felt the cold hit him sharp across the face.
Rain hadn’t started yet, but the air was thick with it, clinging to his skin like static.
He looked back.
Remus was just behind him, boots heavy on the concrete. His hands were in his pockets, collar pulled up. Still that same unreadable expression, like he was sizing up the world and finding it unimpressive.
Sirius didn’t say anything. He just started walking. No direction, no plan. Just forward. He half expected to hear nothing behind him, to turn and find Remus gone.
But the sound of his footsteps followed.
Not rushed.
Not hesitant.
Just... there.
They walked in silence past shuttered shops and blinking signs. A diner on the corner glowed faint pink and green. "Open all night." A few people loitered under the awning. Music leaked out—something fuzzy, old, low-tempo.
Sirius paused.
Remus stopped beside him, glanced at the sign.
"You hungry?" Sirius asked, not looking at him.
Remus gave the slightest shrug. "Could eat."
That was enough.
The diner was nearly empty.
One trucker asleep in a booth with an untouched cup of coffee. A bored girl behind the counter chewing on the end of a pen, pretending to read the menu.
The place smelled like fry oil and sugar and floor cleaner.
Sirius slid into a booth near the back.
Remus took the seat across from him.
They didn’t look at each other at first. Just grabbed menus out of habit, didn’t open them.
A waitress ambled over. Mid-twenties maybe, eyeliner smudged like she’d done it yesterday and decided not to fix it.
"Coffee?" she asked, already pouring.
Sirius nodded. "Yeah. Two."
When she walked away, he finally looked across the table.
Remus had leaned back again, staring past him like he was watching something in the distance.
One leg bounced, slow and rhythmic, like a metronome for thoughts he’d never say out loud.
"I don’t know what I’m doing," Sirius said, out of nowhere.
Remus didn’t respond immediately. Just took the coffee when it came, wrapped his hands around the cup like he needed the heat. Then: "No one does."
Sirius let out a breath that could’ve been a laugh. Could’ve been a sigh.
"Didn’t expect you to follow me off the train."
"I didn’t expect you to ask."
Sirius looked at him. "Wasn’t really a question."
"I know."
And somehow that made it feel more solid. Like they’d both understood something that hadn’t been said out loud, and that was better. Safer.
The coffee was bitter. Sirius drank it anyway.
They didn’t talk much after that.
Didn’t need to.
But the silence wasn’t sharp anymore.
It had softened, worn down into something that settled between them like a coat against the cold.
When they left the diner, the rain had started. Not heavy. Just enough to blur the edges of things.
They walked side by side down the empty street, no destination, no urgency.
It didn’t feel like they were going somewhere.
But for the first time, it didn’t feel like they were running either.
The rain had started to fall harder by the time they stepped off the main road.
It wasn’t a downpour—just persistent, thin needles of water that found every seam and collar and fold. The streetlights cast pale halos through the mist, and everything looked yellowed and blurred, like a film left soaking in old chemicals.
Their boots echoed as they walked—two sets of footsteps cutting through the wet concrete silence of a town that had given up long before they arrived.
Sirius pulled his jacket tighter. It was damp through now. His hair clung to his temples, and the smoke from the half-lit cigarette between his fingers barely held shape in the air. He hadn’t meant to lead. He hadn’t said follow me, hadn’t asked do you want to come?
But Remus was still here, walking beside him, collar turned up, hands in his pockets, jaw set in that unreadable way of his.
Sirius could feel it—something unspoken, heavy in the space between them.
Not tension exactly.
Not trust either.
Just an agreement to keep walking in the same direction until one of them stopped.
Eventually, Sirius spotted the kind of building you didn’t look at twice.
Rooms. Weekly rates. Cash only. Vacancy.
The red neon in the window stuttered in time with the buzz of the overhead light.
The front office was lit with a low flickering bulb and half-covered in plastic.
Newspapers lined the floor behind the counter like someone had given up trying to keep the rain out and just decided to soak it all in.
The man at the desk didn’t look up when Sirius stepped in, dripping and silent. Just slid the guestbook forward with a pen that barely worked and held out a hand for cash.
"One key," he said. "Second floor, last one on the left. Don’t fuck up the bed. That’s the last clean one."
Sirius dropped folded bills on the counter without speaking and turned to leave.
Remus was still standing outside, cigarette lit, shoulder leaning against the frame. Watching the street like it might give him a better option.
But when Sirius passed him, he followed.
The room was worse than expected.
A single double bed. Cigarette burns on the curtains. A lamp that flickered when you touched the switch too gently and refused to turn on when you hit it too hard. The walls were yellowed at the corners, stained with something that might’ve been water damage or smoke. It smelled like bleach trying to cover up rot.
The kind of place where no one asked questions, and no one remembered faces.
Sirius dropped his bag on the wobbly chair in the corner and stripped off his coat. His shirt clung to his skin. He rolled his sleeves to the elbows, dragging his fingers through his wet hair.
"You still good?" he asked, glancing sideways.
Remus looked around the room like he was assessing threat levels. Then shrugged. "It’s a bed."
He stepped inside, let the door fall shut behind him. The lock clicked, but it didn’t sound convincing. The air was heavier in here—trapped, sour with the weight of old smoke and breath.
Sirius toed off his boots, pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the chair beside his bag.
He didn’t care if Remus watched.
Didn’t care if he didn’t.
He was tired and cold and didn’t feel like pretending to be modest in a room with one bed and one lamp that barely worked.
"You want the bed?" Sirius asked, gesturing at it like it wasn’t half-collapsing in the middle.
Remus had peeled off his own jacket and sat on the edge of the mattress without ceremony, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor.
"You paid," he said again.
Sirius raised a brow. "That’s not an answer."
Remus didn’t smile, but something like amusement flickered in the curve of his mouth.
"Then don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to."
Sirius kicked his boots into the corner, crossed the room, and collapsed onto the other side of the bed without bothering to wait for an invitation. It creaked under the weight of both of them. The mattress was thin, dipped in the center.
Their shoulders didn’t touch, but the space between them was barely a breath wide.
The room buzzed with silence.
Sirius lit another cigarette and passed it to Remus, who took it without comment. Their fingers brushed for a half-second.
Sirius didn’t move.
Neither did he.
For a long time, neither of them said anything.
The sounds outside filled the space: a dog barking down the street. A car backfiring. Distant music from some bar with lights still on. Rain tapping the window like someone too polite to knock.
Sirius stared at the ceiling.
"Feels like a movie," he muttered.
Remus exhaled smoke toward the lamp.
"Shitty one."
Sirius huffed something like a laugh.
"Yeah."
He rolled onto his side, propping himself up on an elbow so he could look at Remus properly.
Remus didn’t flinch under the gaze. Just kept smoking, one hand draped across his stomach, the other resting loosely by his side.
"You ever think about stopping?" Sirius asked quietly.
Remus’s gaze didn’t move.
"Stopping what?"
Sirius shrugged.
"All of it."
Remus looked at him then. Just once. One long, slow look. It wasn’t pity. Wasn’t judgment. Just… a shared tiredness.
"Every day," he said.
Sirius laid back again, closed his eyes.
It wasn’t peace. But it was something close.
They didn’t sleep right away.
Neither of them moved much.
The bed creaked when someone shifted. The silence shifted with them. Eventually, the cigarette burned down to nothing, and Remus crushed it into the ashtray on the windowsill without getting up.
The darkness felt like a blanket.
Not comforting, exactly.
Just heavy.
Honest.
Sirius’s voice cut through the quiet one last time.
"You could’ve gone somewhere else."
Remus didn’t answer right away. Then, quietly: "So could you."
Sirius let that sit. Let it settle into the cracks of the night. No need to push further.
The heater kicked on for a second and then died with a sigh.
He fell asleep with the sound of rain against the glass and someone breathing steady beside him.
And Remus lay there still, eyes open, watching the ceiling, until the darkness blurred everything into grey.
The light didn’t come in so much as leak through.
It oozed past the cracks in the warped blinds, thin and grey and indifferent, casting long stripes across the ceiling and bed like prison bars. The room hadn’t changed in the night—still cold, still musty, still sagging under the weight of its own disuse—but something about it felt different anyway.
Maybe it was the stillness.
The kind that only exists early in the morning, before the rest of the world remembers it’s alive.
Maybe it was the fact that no one had left.
Sirius blinked up at the ceiling, disoriented for the first few seconds of consciousness. There was a distant ache in the back of his skull and something raw in his throat. Smoke, maybe. Or dreams he didn’t remember. The air in the room was heavy, thick with yesterday’s cigarettes and something quieter—something like breath.
He turned his head.
Remus was still there.
He hadn’t moved.
He lay on his back, one arm bent under the pillow, the other resting across his chest.
His eyes were closed, but Sirius could tell he wasn’t sleeping. There was too much tension in his body. Not tight, exactly—just alert. Resting in the way a dog rests when it still expects the front door to open.
The bed was small. Their legs were almost touching.
Sirius laid still for a moment longer, breathing slow, letting his mind settle back into his body. It didn’t feel like he’d slept well. But it felt better than most nights. He hadn’t woken up in a sweat. Hadn’t dreamed of marble halls and cold voices and hands dragging him back through doors he’d already slammed shut.
He stretched out slowly, feeling the mattress creak beneath him. The springs gave under his weight, tilting him slightly toward the middle where it sagged the most.
Remus’s eyes opened. Just barely.
They didn’t speak. Not at first. Just sat in the quiet together, the kind that wasn’t awkward, wasn’t forced. Just there.
"You sleep?" Sirius asked eventually, voice rough with disuse.
Remus blinked, then looked at him fully. "Not much."
Sirius nodded. "You look like shit."
"So do you."
That made Sirius smile. Just a little. The edges of his mouth twitched before he sat up, groaning softly at the stiffness in his shoulders. He rubbed a hand through his hair—it was sticking up in all directions, half-damp still from the night before—and scanned the room like it might offer him something new.
It didn’t.
He stood up slowly, legs bare, shirt twisted halfway up his torso, and padded over to the window. Pulled the curtain back two fingers’ width.
The world outside looked just as grey as it had inside—low clouds, wet concrete, the motel parking lot mostly empty except for a rusted-out hatchback and an old man smoking on the stairs.
Rain still lingered in the air, not falling but waiting.
He let the curtain fall back into place and turned around.
Remus had sat up, legs bent, arms looped around his knees. He was watching him—openly now, without flinching. The kind of look Sirius couldn’t read.
Not cold. Not curious. Just there.
He crossed the room, picked up his coat off the back of the chair, and dug around until he found the battered cigarette pack he’d been rationing since two towns ago.
Two left.
He looked over. Remus’s eyes flicked to the pack, then back up to him.
Sirius pulled one out, stuck it between his lips. Then held the other out.
Remus took it without hesitation.
They smoked without words.
Sirius leaned against the chipped desk, one arm braced on the edge, head tilted back as he exhaled toward the ceiling. The smoke curled up into the half-light, dancing along the cracks in the plaster.
Remus stayed on the bed, back resting against the wall now, cigarette between two fingers, his other hand tugging at a loose thread on the blanket.
There was a comfort in the silence.
Not comfort like warmth.
Comfort like recognition.
Like two people used to keeping their mouths shut for different reasons and realizing, quietly, that they didn’t need to perform here.
"I used to think," Sirius said suddenly, voice flat but not distant, "that leaving would feel like freedom. Like cutting a rope."
Remus didn’t speak, just turned his head slightly toward him.
"But I didn’t feel anything." Sirius took another drag. "I thought it’d hit me—the high of it. The rush. But it’s just… quiet."
Remus tapped ash into the dented tray on the bedside table. "Sometimes quiet is better than screaming."
Sirius looked at him, really looked.
Not at his jacket. Not at the mess of curls.
Not at the bruised color beneath his eyes.
But him. The person who hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t filled the room with noise, hadn’t told him to go back.
"You always this wise, or is it just mornings that bring it out of you?" Sirius asked, dry but not unkind.
Remus snorted, the sound soft and real. "Mornings are when I talk the least. Consider yourself blessed."
Sirius let the silence take over again.
He moved to the window and cracked it open an inch, letting in the cold air and the scent of wet asphalt.
The room breathed with it.
"You want to stay another night?" Sirius asked after a long pause.
Remus didn’t react immediately.
Sirius didn’t know why he asked. He didn’t need company. Didn’t want it, usually. But the thought of a night without this—without the shared stillness, the smoke between them, the absence of expectation—felt heavier than it should’ve.
Remus’s voice came low. "You sure?"
Sirius nodded. "Yeah. I’ll cover it."
A beat passed.
Then: "Alright."
The sound of the word—quiet, even—settled something in Sirius’s chest. He didn’t know what it was. Didn’t want to name it.
They dressed slowly.
Neither of them in a rush.
Sirius tugged on his boots and shoved his shirt into his jeans, hair still a mess, face still worn. Remus rolled the sleeves of his jumper down to his wrists, tucked his lighter into his coat pocket, and stood without a sound.
The morning stretched thin and grey as they stepped out into it. The lot was still empty. The sky hung low. The rain was holding off but not for long.
"Coffee?" Sirius asked, squinting down the road.
Remus nodded once. "Lead the way."
They walked in step. Not close enough to touch. But not far, either.
Just enough.
The town didn’t look any better in daylight.
It was the kind of place that felt permanently out of focus.
Storefronts that hadn’t seen fresh paint in years. A laundromat with a flickering OPEN sign and one window cracked open with a piece of cardboard jammed into it. The air carried the thick, wet smell of recent rain—oil rising from pavement, rot from alleyways, the ghost of cigarettes smoked too close to doorways.
Sirius walked with his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, boots scuffing along the uneven sidewalk. Beside him, Remus walked like someone who’d been doing it forever—shoulders slightly hunched, gaze on the ground, letting the weight of his coat carry him forward.
Neither of them said anything. But they didn’t need to.
They went to the same diner as yesterday that was three blocks away from the motel. Old-school, faded sign out front with the letters COFFEE, GRITS, PIE stenciled onto the windows like a promise.
The door jingled when Sirius pushed it open with his shoulder.
Forgotten.
They slid into a booth near the window.
Sirius pressed back against the vinyl seat, let his head tip against the wall behind him. The cushion was stiff and cracked, and the table had a dark ring where a thousand cups of coffee had bled into the laminate. He rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled slow. Too many nights with too little sleep clung to his bones.
Remus sat opposite him, still in his jacket, hands resting on the edge of the table. His eyes were dull in the morning light. Not tired—just used to it.
The waitress didn’t speak when she came over. She just poured two mugs of burnt-smelling coffee and dropped a laminated menu between them before disappearing back behind the counter.
Sirius curled his hands around the cup, letting the heat settle into his fingers. The rain outside had slowed to a mist, the window fogging slightly around the edges.
The town was waking up in small, indifferent ways—a garbage truck grumbling past, a man arguing with a meter, someone unlocking a pawn shop three stores down.
Remus shifted in the booth and pulled a small bottle from his pocket.
Sirius clocked it out of the corner of his eye.
White capsule. No label. Remus popped one into his mouth, chased it with coffee, tucked the bottle back like it was nothing.
Sirius didn’t ask.
He just stared at the swirling black in his cup and said, "You ever feel like the world’s been running without you for a while?"
Remus tapped his fingers against the side of his mug. “Don't care that much about it.”
Sirius huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. "It’s weird. I thought leaving would make everything quieter. Like maybe if I got far enough, it’d stop buzzing in my head."
Remus didn’t speak.
"But it doesn’t," Sirius continued. "It’s just more static. Different background noise, same fucking frequency."
Finally, Remus spoke—quiet, even: "You can turn down the volume, but it never stops."
That made Sirius look up.
He met Remus’s eyes for a second too long. They were tired, yeah, but not hollow.
Just heavy.
Like someone who’d been carrying too much for too long and stopped expecting anyone to offer a hand.
"Was that supposed to be comforting?" Sirius asked.
Remus shrugged. "Wasn’t supposed to be anything."
Sirius sat back, draped one arm over the back of the booth, cigarette itch crawling under his skin. "Do you always have such a shitty personality?"
Remus raised an eyebrow, deadpan. "You always this annoying before coffee?"
Sirius smirked, then took a sip. It was bitter, burned, nearly undrinkable.
He drank it anyway.
A man outside shouted something down the block. Sirius turned to look. Just some guy with a busted shopping cart, yelling at the sky. No one paid him any mind. No one ever did.
He turned back. Remus was watching the same scene, expression unreadable.
"This town feel familiar to you?" Sirius asked.
"They all do."
Another long pause. The kind that would’ve been uncomfortable a day ago.
Now it just sat between them like steam rising from the table.
Sirius fished the last two cigarettes from his coat. He passed one across the table wordlessly and reached for his lighter.
Remus took it, lit it himself, inhaled deep like it mattered.
"I don’t think I ever had a plan," Sirius said, smoke curling past his lips. "I just left."
Remus said nothing.
"I used to pretend I’d figure it out once I was gone," Sirius went on. "That there’d be this… click. Like, okay, you did it. You escaped. Now you can breathe."
He flicked ash into the empty mug in front of him.
"But I think I forgot how to."
Remus leaned forward slightly. His voice was flat but not cruel. "You don’t escape like that. Not really."
Sirius looked at him, a slow burn behind his eyes. "Yeah?"
"You just trade one kind of stuck for another."
Sirius let that settle.
His cigarette was nearly burned down. He crushed it in the mug and stared at the blackened filter.
He wanted to say something else. Something sarcastic. Or flippant. Or angry.
Instead, he said, "You ever think about stopping?"
Remus didn’t react. Didn’t flinch. Just met his eyes, calm and unblinking.
" I did," he said. "A few times."
Sirius didn’t ask what changed.
He didn’t need to.
They paid with crumpled bills and coins.
The waitress didn’t say goodbye.
The bell over the door rang hollow as they stepped back into the cold.
Outside, the rain had picked up again. Not heavy, but steady. Soaking through collar seams. Cold fingers down spines.
They stood under the awning for a moment, neither of them moving, cigarettes gone, coffee settling in their stomachs like stones.
"You want to head back?" Sirius asked, hands deep in his pockets.
Remus gave a vague nod. "Yeah."
Sirius started walking. Remus fell into step beside him.
Half a block later, Sirius paused beside a corner shop, ducked inside without explanation. Remus waited out front under the overhang, shaking rain from his sleeves. A minute later, Sirius emerged with another pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and two candy bars.
He tossd one to Remus without looking.
"You look like you could use some sugar."
Remus caught it. Didn’t say thank you.
Didn’t need to.
They walked back in silence. Not the kind that pushed them apart. The kind that kept them in orbit.
The motel loomed ahead, damp and sad-looking in the midday grey.
As they stepped into the room again, Sirius dropped the pack on the nightstand and peeled off his wet coat.
Remus kicked off his boots. Sat down on the bed.
Didn’t say a word.
And Sirius didn’t need one.
Because Remus was still here.
That was enough.