Chapter 4
Sirius wakes up at five thirty, completely alone.
Breakfast is at nine, and Lupin‘s bed is empty, his doc martins gone as well as his stupid teddy bear jacket.
For the first while, Sirius thinks nothing of it.
Not like he cares, anyway.
He watches a movie, reads the book Reg got him for Christmas, watches another movie, rewatches a series he watched a while back, texts Monty who‘s always awake early and watches the news on the telly, of which he understands nothing.
At half past seven, Sirius does start to get a little worried. Not that he‘ll admit it. But he is.
At around eight, he pokes his head out the window, thinking that maybe Lupin just went outside for some fresh air and fell asleep, but there‘s no sign of him.
Afterward, he goes to Reg and James‘ room to distract himself, but after James lets him in, he just crawls back into the bed where Regulus is asleep, pulls him close again, and promptly falls back asleep.
Sirius sits down on Regulus‘ empty bed and stares at the ceiling for a few hours. (6 minutes) before rolling over and shaking his brother awake.
“Sirius, I swear to fuck, I will bite you”
”Sorry”
Regulus rolls over to glare at him. “What is it?”
“I dunno”
Regulus rolls his eyes so hard, Sirius is sure he saw the inside of his brain.
“I mean, Lupin isn’t in the room, like, he just disappeared, and he’s so annoying so it pissed me off”
”It pissed you off that the person who annoys you left you alone?”
”Yes”
”Wow”
“Reeeeeg”
”How long has he been gone?”
”He was gone when I woke up at like five”
“… He’s been gone since five in the morning?”
”Yeah”
”And you didn’t think to maybe tell the teachers?”
”…no”
”Sirius-“
”No wait, because like, he said he wasn’t going to stick around”
”And that makes it better, how exactly?”
”Well, I’m not gonna just tell on him”
”It’s not telling, Sirius, he’s a minor who’s been gone for hours in a city he doesn’t live in”
”He used to live here”
”Do you know where?”
”Why would I know that?”
”Well, you seem pretty fucking obsessed with him in every other way”
”What- I’m not obsessed with him!”
“Sure”
”Regulus”
“Sirius”
“Guys… I wanna sleep”
James’ mumble gets both their attention, and they look over at him, frowning into his pillow.
Regulus, immediately in boyfriend-mode, crawls back over to him and pets his hair, apologising.
Sirius rolls his eyes and gets up, deciding to go get changed before these idiots make him get sick all over himself.
“Sirius”
“What?”
He turns to Regulus as he calls his name just before he touches the door handle.
“It’s okay to care about people”
Sirius stares at his little brother and decides right then, that everyone is stupid.
He stomps down the hall and into his room, slamming the door behind him. As he makes his way to the wardrobe for some clean clothes, he doesn’t notice the jacket that’s on the back of the chair, or the DocMartins lying messily by the foot of the bed.
No, it’s not until he sees his reflection in the mirror and screams like a banshee that he realises Lupin is back.
“What the bloody fuck!”
”Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m sorry” Lupin can’t hide the amused grin on his face at Sirius’ reaction. ”Sorry” he says again, distracted.
“Where the fuck where you?” Sirius pokes him in the chest, “And why the fuck did you leave at five in the fucking morning!?”
”Well, first, I left at 3, and second, why do you even care?”
Sirius suddenly realises exactly how much taller Lupin is.
“Well, I just- I-“
Lupin stares, waiting for an answer that Sirius doesn’t have. What Sirius does have, is a short temper.
“I don’t care,” he snaps, “I just don’t want you to make me look bad in front of the teachers. Some of us actually care about life, you know?”
That seems to hit some sore spot Sirius didn’t know about, because Lupin’s face contorts slightly.
“Well, whatever. I’m here now, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
”Nope”
“Great”
”Great”
Lupin stares for another second, before turning around, snatching his phone from his bed and leaving the room to go to breakfast.
Sirius watches the door, like he can make Lupin come back with his mind, before sighing, banging his head against the wall once, and following him.
Sirius has always loved buffets, they’re an absolute masterpiece, and whoever invented them should get a nobel prize.
He piles two toast, a croissant, cheese, ice cream, pancakes, two churros and a single cherry onto his plate, before walking back to his seat between Regulus and Lupin.
Regulus is in deep conversation with Barty and Evan, James is still lost in the buffet somewhere, probably wherever the marshmallows are, and the girls are all having some kind of debate with Frank and Benji, so the only person he could potentially talk to would be Lupin, if he weren’t having some hushed conversation with McGonagall.
Immediately, Sirius is reminded of all the talks he’s had with her himself, before they ran away and she was the only adult he trusted. All the shared biscuits in her office, soft (or as soft as they can be from her) smiles and excuses of why homework was missing. She’d never, not once, questioned him about why his holiday homework wasn’t done, and for some ‘unknown’ reason all the other teachers let it go, too.
Sirius pretends to have never seen McGonagall talking to a slightly trembling Slughorn and hearing his name.
Now, Sirius has always been jealous, it’s just something he can’t control. He was jealous when Regulus wanted to play with their cousins, he was jealous when James wanted to talk to Regulus one their own sometimes, he was jealous when the Potter’s cat liked to sleep in Regulus’ room more than his, he was jealous when Mary wanted to braid Lily’s hair and not his, and he’s jealous now when McGonagall, his mum number 2, after Effie, is talking all gentle with Remus fucking Lupin.
He can’t help but glare as Remus fidgets uncomfortably under her gaze. She looks so concerned, and Sirius hates it. They haven’t had a talk since he ran away, as if she stopped caring when he stopped being her problem. And now she cares about Lupin.
His gaze doesn’t waver once until finally Lupin is excused and he makes his way back to the table, almost running.
He plops into his seat next to Sirius, and sucks in a sharp breath.
“What’d she want?” Sirius asks, eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“What did she want?”
Lupin stares at him for a good twenty seconds, before shaking his head. “Nothing”
“Yeah, right”
“It’s nothing”
“I don’t believe you”
“I don’t care”
“Just tell me”
“It’s none of your business”
“I want to know”
“Well, you’re not gonna, fuck off”
“Why can’t you just-”
Sirius freezes when he catches sight of pulled up, slick back hair, and straight back and dark green blouse.
It’s like the air is punched out of him, and before he even knows what he’s doing, he turns around frantically, looking for his brother.
But Regulus’ chair is empty, his plate gone and Sirius makes the most horrible noise. He stands up so quickly his chair would’ve fallen over if Lupin hadn’t caught it.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Sirius barely hears him as he looks around desperately.
“Where-”
“Sirius?” He turns around again, Regulus standing there with a now full plate, eyes full of concern. Sirius can barely make his legs move as he scrambles forward to hug him tight against his chest.
He doesn’t dare turn around, his heartbeat too loud in his ears and his breaths coming out in short spasms.
“Siri? What happened?”
Regulus hugs him back, voice shaking a little as he asks what’s wrong. Sirius can feel him turning his head to look around the room, can feel the exact second his eyes land on her.
“Siri, it’s not her”
Sirius nearly fucking whimpers.
“It’s not her, I promise.”
Sirius shakes his head and Regulus holds him tighter. Suddenly James is there too, with a hand on his shoulder and Sirius starts to breathe again.
That is until he realises his entire class is staring at him with such pity.
Most of them know, it’s hard for them not to, there are only so many things you can do to hide the fact that you ran away from your house after being beaten up by your parents. It’s obvious in both of them, the way Regulus flinches when people raise their voices, the way Sirius doesn’t let people near his food like they’ll take it away. Neither of them can really help it.
There is one person that doesn't know, and Sirius desperately wants it to stay like that.
So he takes a deep breath and tries to look dignified as he sits back down like nothing happened.
His face is probably completely red, but Sirius ignores it as he starts eating his croissant.
“What the fuck, mate?”
He doesn’t look at Lupin, still munching away.
“Black, what the hell?”
He looks out the window.
“You’re seriously not going to say anything?”
“You didn’t want to tell me what McGonagall said”
“I didn’t have a breakdown in the middle of breakfast”
“I did not have a breakdown”
“Really? What would you call that then?”
“I was just hugging my brother”
“Yeah, like he was about to die”
“Fuck you, you don’t know shit about me”
“And you don’t know shit about me”
“Fine”
Sirius gets up and storms out again.
He hates being so emotional sometimes.
It’s like his head is underwater and he can’t think anything through, only feel something and then act on it. He yells and kicks and does things he regerts later but he can’t fucking help it.
Effie always says that there’s nothing wrong with that, and that he just needs to find something that can calm him down a little. She always suggests meditation but there’s no way in fuck Sirius is going to that. Not with how much Regulus will laugh at him.
Even though Reg can be mean, he did try to help. Regulus, for some reason, thinks that chess can solve any emotional challenge, probably because whenever he feels too much, he just sits down in front of a chess board and plays by himself until he forgets about everything. That, or he makes out with James.
Either way, it seems to work.
Except that Regulus is a very good chess player, so there was no opportunity for Sirius to learn because whenever Regulus tried to teach him, he’d beat him in less than ten minutes.
Sirius isn’t sure Regulus can really help it. He usually starts to gag after every one of Sirius’ moves.
Once the bathroom door is locked, Sirius lowers himself into the empty bathtub and stares at the ceiling.
He doesn’t want to think about it, if he’s honest.
Sirius has always been the braver, stronger big brother. He’s always been the one to protect, to take care, to cheer up.
If Regulus tripped and scraped his knee, he’d go running to him and cry in his arms until he forgot about the pain. He’d demand Sirius kiss all his injuries and pet his hair while he fell asleep. He’d lie on his chest, quietly counting his heartbeat while Sirius told him some story that didn’t make any sense.
Regulus still has nightmares, a lot of them. And James and Sirius sometimes have to lie next to him for hours before he calms down, too scared to be away from them. He literally clings to them like they’ll disappear, crying and crying and crying until he starts thinking straight again and realises that they’re not actually going anywhere. It breaks Sirius’ heart every time.
And it also means that still, he’s the protector and Regulus is the one who hides behind him, the one who needs him.
Sirius doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to tell his brother that he needs him, too. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the heart to tell him that he has nightmares too, that he cries sometimes, too.
He knows that Regulus probably knows anyway, but admitting it? No, Sirius is the strong one, and he’ll keep it that way until the day he dies.
But he still can’t change the fact that he has the nightmares. That he has a meltdown when he sees someone who resembles his mother. That he can’t sleep sometimes when Regulus isn’t there. Sometimes it’s not even that he’s scared for Regulus, it’s that he’s scared for himself.
He hears the door to the room open and squeezes his eyes shut.
“Hey, Sirius”
Lupin calls for him softly, his welsh accent weirdly sounding almost like he’s singing.
“What?”
His answer doesn’t have the bite he wishes it would, but he can’t bring himself to yell when Lupin sounds like a kicked puppy.
“Um, I’m sorry about just now. I get it, really. I have them too, sometimes”
”You have what?”
”Panic attacks? Or, you know, like, breakdowns. I’m sorry I was a cunt. I won’t do it again. Probably.”
Sirius chuckles despite himself. “Is that a hard task for you?”
Lupin chuckles too, “Yeah, I…”
When he doesn’t finish, Sirius gets up and pulls the door open. “You what?”
”I just tend to piss people off”
”Why?”
”I dunno. Just do.”
”You piss me off“
”I know. I’m sorry.”
”You’re sorry?”
”I don’t mean to”
”You don’t?“
”No?”
Sirius stares at him. “What about that time you nearly punched me on the plane”
”You were asking for it, to be honest”
”I-“ Sirius doesn’t really have an argument, so he closes his mouth again.
“Um, you could tell me, if you wanted”
”Tell you…?”
”Why you had a panic attack”
”Only if you tell me what you meant with I don’t know shit about you, first”
Lupin grimaces slightly. “I meant that I’m new, you met me two months ago and you don’t know anything about me”
”Yes, I do”
”You really don’t”
”What don’t I know then?”
Lupin’s face changes so quickly from slight discomfort to full on ‘stop talking or I’ll punch you so hard you see stars’.
Sirius swallows and takes a shaky breath at the intensity of it.
“It’s none of your business”
”Then neither is my panic attack any of yours”
Lupin’s eye twitches. “No, it’s not, I was just being fucking nice”
”Well, maybe I don’t want you to be nice”
”Fine, I won’t be”
”Fine”
”Fine”
”God, your so fucking frustrating.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not like you, no”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
“No, do you even know how infuriating you are?”
“You’re fucking unbelieve-” Lupin breaks of, pinching his nose, sighing. “Look, I don’t want to fight-”
“Well, I do”
“Sirius”
He shakes his head, “Whatever, Lupin. I don’t care.”
Sirius pushes past him and throws himself onto his bed, picking up his phone to scroll through pinterest.
Lupin slowly walks over to his own bed, sitting down on the edge.
Sirius knows he’s staring, but refuses to acknowledge it as he keeps scrolling.
Eventually, Rem- Lupin huffs and lays down properly, getting out his book.
They sit there in stubborn silence until Flitwick knocks on their door, yelling “Lights out, boys!”
Lupin stands up from his bed around one and a half hours later, pulling on his jacket and slipping into his shoes.
Sirius watches silently as he types one last thing into his phone before walking to the door.
“I’ll be back later”
And with that, he’s gone.