“Can you just please talk to me? Like a person?” Remus was tired. Exhausted, really. Tight skin stretched over creaking joints and stiff bones, he felt ancient.
He'd been doing the dishes while Sirius sat at the kitchen table, as they let a suffocating and uncomfortable silence settle over them.
Sirius, zipped tight and shoulders rigid, had walked in and physically shrugged off Remus’s greeting like unwanted touch. A botched mumbling that laid their crumbling civility on the floor between them. Rubble that made it hard to walk, to stand up straight, to reach one another.
“Can we do that?” He pressed in the silence. “Can we talk like real people? Like you have feelings and I have feelings and they’re messy and weird and can we just say them out loud? Please?”
He was at the end of his rope. On the very edge of his sanity and composure, clutching at it like dust on the wind. He couldn’t take this anymore. He could no longer tolerate this bricked up version of Sirius that avoided him, that shut down when their conversations threatened to move beyond the banality of the weather and groceries. A Sirius that got annoyed with Remus when he was quiet, when the only reason Remus was quiet was because Sirius kept biting his head off for talking.
A mess. They were a fucking mess.
Sirius didn’t respond. A hare caught in a beam of light in an open field. Frozen. Don’t move too quickly, a memory of Remus’s dad surfaced at the sight, when he tried to teach Remus how to hunt small game before realising what a futile effort that was, they spook easy.
He wiped his pruned hands on the ghastly red dish towel, dog days embroidered on the edge with little scotty dogs patterned along the fringe. The faded cloth had been unearthed at a charity shop. It was the ugliest thing Remus had ever seen and he never once regretted the purchase for the way Sirius loved it.
Remus threw it aside, balled up and damp.
A hard breath, a rough hand over his face, and finally, the death of his ego as he walked over to Sirius. He sank to his knees on the checkered tiles, bare feet tucked beneath corduroy slacks, shoulders rounded. “Sirius, I am literally, literally begging you to talk to me.”
Sirius closed his eyes against him. Two lines between his eyebrows creased deep and mouth drawn tight and thin. Remus knew those lines were permanent, now, even on the rare occasion Sirius smiled these days.
“What do you want to talk about?” Still and mechanical. Vacant.
“Anything.” Remus begged. His clammy hands clutched the exposed knees that came through black denim, his thumbs slipping beneath the frayed edge of the fabric. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Nothing,” empty voice, empty house.
“You’re so full of shit, Pads.” Remus’s voice cracked around the accusation.
“I said I’m fine!” Sirius snapped. Hot tempered and hackles raised in an instant. Remus chased the fire, eager to feed it, to burn away this false normality.
“Jesus Christ, Sirius. Well, that sure is the response of someone who isn’t feeling anything, that’s for sure.” A laugh that balanced on a knife’s edge bubbled up in his throat, one breath away from a sob.
Guilt and anger painted Sirius’s features for a moment. He sighed, his face dropped in defeat and his shining eyes ticked up to a point on the wall. “What do you want me to say?”
Remus’s eyes burned with warning and he thudded his forehead to Sirius’s bare knee to hide the hot flush of his face. Only Sirius could make him this pathetic, make his voice crack in this particularly transparent way, make him kneel, begging on the kitchen floor for a crumb of connection. “Fucking anything real, Sirius.”
“To what end?” His arms were still crossed and Remus wanted to shake him.
“Do you— do you just not— care? Anymore? About me? About us? Like, what do you mean?” Remus’s chest was tight. His throat was tight. Trying to mirror Sirius’s aloofness and unaffected demeanour was like trying to sit in lit fire without wincing. He wanted to crawl out of his skin, crawl into Sirius’s lap, crawl into his mouth.
“Of course I care.” Sirius said softly, voice wavering like a flickering light in the dark.
“Prove it.” Remus pushed, lifting his head, knowing how wretched he must look, “talk to me. I am literally drowning over here. You never telling me anything about what’s going on— in your head or your heart or anything— hell, I’d be happy to hear about your god damn bathroom habits at this point.”
A hairline fracture in the stone, a weak smile and an even softer voice. “Don’t be gross, Moony.”
“I’m not kidding,” Remus pushed, still balancing on the edge between an inappropriately hysterical laugh and aching tears. His heart was in his throat.
Sirius sighed and finally looked at him. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?” Remus asked, a little frantic, his eager hands on Sirius’s cold knees. “That still doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Everything, I suppose.” Sirius’s arms relaxed from their tight grip around his own middle, distracted hands falling into his lap.
Remus took a risk and side his right hand up Sirius’s thigh to reach for them. Something he hadn’t been allowed to do in months. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Sirius’s warm fingers slid more easily and comfortably into Remus’s cold ones than he expected. Remus’s bare feet were chilled and tingling from sitting on them but he was too afraid to move. Afraid to break the fragile moment.
“Someone is giving information to the Death Eaters.” Sirius’s voice was hoarse. “One of our own.”
“Impossible.” Remus’s voice didn’t sound like his own anymore. It sounded childish and naive.
Sirius only shook his head.
“Do you know for certain?”
“I can’t know anything for certain.” Sirius shrugged.
“Then, why do you think it’s one of us?”
Sirius looked him over, expression unreadable, his gaze flitting across Remus’s features, settling finally on his eyes. “Because the things coming through the grapevine are only things the four of us know.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“So, you don’t know if you can trust me?” It wasn’t accusation. More a statement. A recognition. Remus deflated completely because of course Sirius suspected him. Of course.
Again, Sirius didn’t respond. He watched Remus huff and nod, let Remus’s hand slide out of his loose grip. Remus used Sirius’s knees to leverage himself, his own cracking and popping in protest as he hauled his creaking bones and self loathing up from the floor.
“I don’t think it’s you.” Sirius whispered, like he was afraid. Like if he said it out loud Remus would laugh and shout you fool! Of course it’s me! Who else could it be?!
Remus was standing now, looking down at Sirius in the chair. Completely helpless. Sirius had been his only refuge in the hell scape of the last two years, and so much was changing so fast. Lily was pregnant. Peter had proposed to Marlene. Remus couldn’t cope with the thought of losing Sirius too. Of being left behind.
His scarred hand slid into Sirius’s hair and he watched with flicker of familiar affection at how the man’s eyes drifted shut, how he leaned into the touch despite everything, how his shoulders relaxed. He pulled Sirius towards him, standing between his legs, and Sirius wrapped his arms around Remus’s middle, head resting against the soft of Remus’s belly.
“I would rather let Greyback rip me limb from limb than ever betray any of you.” Remus whispered. “I know you can’t take my word for it. And, that’s okay. But just know that I would gladly die before putting you or Peter or James or Lily, or their child in danger.”
“Don’t say that.” Sirius sniffed, squeezing harder.
“Why not?”
“You’re always looking for an out.”
“What do you mean?”
Sirius laughed a bit wetly, burying his face into Remus’s sweater, squeezing harder. “The only reason you haven’t killed yourself is because it’s too much hassle.”
“You think I would sell you all out in the hopes that someone would kill me for it?” Remus asked incredulously.
“Oh, my gods, no, you idiot. I just mean, you saying you’d rather die than do something isn’t the bold statement you think it is.”
“Come here,” Remus demanded gently, untangling Sirius from his middle and forcing the man to his feet. Hands on either side of Sirius’s neck, thumbs gentle on his jaw line, he looked into the deep grey eyes and felt that ache in his chest, the one he attributed exclusively to his love for Sirius. “As long as you’re breathing, I will do everything in my power to stay alive. To keep our family safe.”
“And if I’m not breathing?” Sirius asked, forlorn and so suddenly on the edge of completely unraveling.
“Then, all bets are off, I’m walking into Greyback’s tent with a bomb strapped to my back.”
Sirius did not appreciate that answer. “That’s not funny.”
Remus gave him an unapologetic grin. “It’s a little funny.”
“No, Remus.” Sirius crumpled, his eyes shining, his voice wavering. “If something happens to me, you’re next in line for James and Lily’s baby. You have to be there.”
Now, Remus felt a bit of cock for his crass joke and pulled Sirius into a hug. “Of course. I’m sorry. Of course I’ll be there for them. I’ll always be here for all of you. I’m not going anywhere.”
He could feel Sirius nodding against his shoulder and he sighed in relief that they were getting to have this moment of honesty. This moment of transparency.
“I love you.” Sirius said thickly and quietly into the crook of Remus’s neck.
“I love you, too.” Remus whispered into his hair, smelling clove cigarettes and neroli shampoo. “I love you so much its—" he faltered. Choked on the words. Drowned by them.
“I know.”
Remus sighed and squeezed Sirius harder and sent up a prayer, to whoever might be listening, that they would be okay. That they would make it through this alive.