There were documents on the desk, stacks of papers sitting unorderly (it was Remus who'd made a mess of them, Sirius loved cleaning, it was Remus), a couple of their pens in a marmalade jar Sirius had made into a pencil case; a paint brush, an open book (the title read Pride and Prejudice). Their things, casually blended together, like they were one being—all crashing to the floor, the jar breaking into dozens of shards, the pens rolling away.
He swore and held his head with his hand like he had a headache, which wasn't that far from the truth. His mind was a worse mess than their bedroom, more like the whole flat, now that he thought back to his dedication to trash it, a single mantra dominating his thoughts: I can't find it. But he'd looked everywhere, he'd tried; turned their shoes upside down by the door, his father's old Oxfords all tangled up with Sirius' shiny Dr. Martens; looked under the crimson carpet; all the lights turned on so he could find the fucking thing before Sirius got home. And now Sirius would get home and the flat would be shit: bed sheets rumpled; a pillow on the floor and how did that even get there; drawers open; chairs pulled.
There was no way he had left it with the werewolf pack, he always took it off before joining them. It wasn't beside the bathroom sink either, and it hadn't fallen on the shower, even though his fingers had been getting thinner lately; he'd checked. He'd checked everywhere. It was just gone.
It looked like, like a fucking thief had broken into, but it was just Remus Lupin, resident unemployed turned-into-spy-by-Dumbledore werewolf, turning everything upside down because he'd lost his fucking ring. The ring he'd exchanged with Sirius after they'd moved in together, the one that bound them in marriage whether it was legal or not, and losing it now felt monumental, symbolic, as if he'd lost—he would not voice it out loud.
Desperation choked him like a tidal wave. His heart felt like a stone dragging him down, what once was an anchor now a death sentence in the bottom of the ocean. He couldn't have lost that ring, not now when he had lost almost all of his hope. It felt significant, some sort of sign, and he didn't believe in that kind of thing, yet the dread still came, persistent like the paranoid voice in his head. If he could not find that ring, he could not reach for Sirius in the dark and trust him; he could not not love him, too, but it was scary, how you could love someone so much, for so long, and still fear that they might be the traitor, the one passing information to the enemy, the one you could not trust.
It was so easy, it made so much sense—Sirius changing his mind, joining his blood family—but it also didn't—Sirius was as stubborn as a mule, and he hated his family. Only he had locked himself in the bathroom and drunk when Regulus had died a year ago, and he'd laughed at Narcissa's wedding making the news in the Daily Prophet. Perfect antithesis, paradoxical asymmetry. So what was left for Remus to think?
Still, he looked for the ring; maybe it had rolled under the bed, and his back ached from old wounds as he bent down to search. He found Sirius' underwear, a sock, a magazine with Freddie Mercury on its front; no sign of a silver ring, and his throat constricted, and he swallowed. He felt so cold. He sneezed from the dust and thought he should clean; he didn't. Maybe it was on the kitchen counter, he'd looked, he could look again, it had to be there—but it wasn't, just Sirius' favourite mug next to Remus', the bitter scent of coffee still lingering in the air, the remains of omelette and bread that he'd covered with a plate for later.
It was monumentally stupid, wasn't it, to balance all his love and fear in whether he'd find this ring or not—such a small thing, and yet, and yet…
The sound of SilverSprings flowed through the flat and he startled, hitting his elbow on the counter as he turned around. Before he realised, he'd drawn his wand and pointed it at Sirius (or maybe it was an intruder, a Death Eater masquerading as his lover, or perhaps it was Sirius, only gone to the dark, so what difference did it make) who had been crouching in front of the cassette player and had placed a tape in it.
Sirius grinned at him, raising his hands in surrender. He was so beautiful, his grey eyes shining silver under the dim light, and it cast strange shadows upon his face, it made him look ethereal, a creature of another world, one that didn't belong among the mortals—and Remus loved him, and he wanted to kiss him, and prayed he wasn't a fool.
"You're a werewolf and your patronus is a wolf, and you love reading, and I'm your husband, though some would say we're breaking the law, if they knew," Sirius said, and Remus was lowering his wand already.
"And you got drunk on Firewhiskey and threw up on Bella's feet on her wedding day, and we first made out after you ran away," he said, feeling stupid at the childish fact he had thought (or hadn't, really, thought) to say, nothing compared to Sirius'.
Sirius was surveying the room now, eyebrows furrowed as he took in the state of their flat, Remus' undoubtedly dishevelled appearance (he could feel his hair plastered to his forehead from sweat, the dark circles under his dull brown eyes, his hallowed face like it was a skull, and his scars, his fucking scars, why was Sirius with him, it made no sense—)
"What's wrong, are you okay, are you hurt," Sirius said as he approached, hands on Remus' shoulders as he searched for wounds he knew he would find, because Remus always had wounds; he shook his head.
"I'm fine, I've been searching the flat," he said, meeting Sirius' eyes and watching them turn wary, because it wasn't just Remus who didn't trust, it was Sirius too.
Sirius took a step back, casually slipping his hands into his pocket, and almost tripped over the carpet.
"Yeah?" he said, "what for?"
The absence of his touch was the absence of everything warm that had ever existed, and yet Remus took a step back too, leaned on the counter.
"I lost my ring, I can't fucking find it," and Sirius' shoulders lost some of that tension, that strict posture that made him look impossibly like Regulus, like a Black, like he wasn't Remus'.
"Oh—" said so numbly, then that bright smile— "I'll help you look for it."
And he did; soon enough they were searching the opposite corners of the living room, and he craned his neck once in a while to check on Sirius, how his black hair fell in front of his face like a curtain, and he couldn't see the expression behind, only guess.
"I got it," said Sirius about fifteen minutes later, emerging from their bedroom clutching something—the ring—in his fist. His voice was strangely colourless. The cassette kept playing SilverSprings over and over again, it was clearly broken; no one went to fix it. Remus was getting sick of Stevie Nicks' voice.
"Thank Merlin," he said, relief filling him as he breathed again, and yet he felt unease at Sirius' look. "Where was it?"
"On my nightstand," Sirius replied as Remus walked toward him, and he took Remus' hand on his and put the ring on his finger. How warm his hands were, he noticed, but Remus' coldness persisted, made him all blank inside. How cruel love could be when trust was lost.
He smiled—"Thank you"—and Sirius kissed his knuckles, let his hand fall. Warm lips on cold skin, they were an antithesis themselves.
I say, I loved you years ago, Stevie Nicks sang. A siren burst somewhere, and shouting voices started. Cars buzzed outside, and Sirius breathed in front of him, alive and there, and Remus smiled as he felt something inside him shatter a little more, as he was dragged by the hand in the bedroom, but something came alive again when Sirius turned to look at him.