Chapter 1
March 2024
“Do I have to go?” Sirius groans, burying his face in his arms with a huff, and his forehead thumps against the polished wooden surface of Regulus’s dining table.
“To your son’s graduation?” It's clear by the soft wobble in his voice that Reg is struggling to stifle a laugh but he braves through it, keeping a straight face in faux sympathy for his brother. “Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Does He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named have to go then?” he mumbles without lifting his head up so his voice comes out all garbled and muffled by the sleeves of his plaid shirt. He’s sure that if he looks up, a haughty, bemused look will be perched on Regulus’s regal face and he’s not in the mood for it.
“To his son's graduation?” This time, a little uncontained snort comes out and Sirius stares daggers at him.
“I'm glad my pain is amusing to you,” he says at last, flatly, and finally sits up in his chair like the responsible adult he is supposed to be. He feels a pang of disgust at himself, at how he’s already past forty and acting as pathetic as a scorned teenager, but the bitterness that has made a home for itself in the dead center of his chest for the past four years has a way of taking over him that he really can’t shake, especially when having to be face-to-face with Remus is concerned.
“It’s just for a few days,” his brother offers primly, spearing a cherry tomato onto the fork and popping it into his mouth, all of a sudden more interested in his salad than he is in looking at Sirius. “And you don’t have to interact with him at all. At worst you’ll have to pose for a picture.”
“I’ll be breathing the same air as him, that’s miserable enough.”
“I’m sure Boston is large enough for the two of you—”
“The world’s not large enough for the two of us,” Sirius grumbles, then takes an angry stab at the Romaine lettuce in his plate.
James barges in just then, pushing the kitchen door open with a swish of his hip. He’s carrying a steaming pot of pasta, a white towel thrown over his shoulder, and he narrows his eyes at Sirius in mock annoyance behind the fogged up lenses of his golden-rimmed glasses.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t trash talk my friend in front of me, or there’s no pasta for you.”
“Well,” Sirius barks out, extending his empty plate to help his best-mate-turned-brother-in-law out with serving dinner, nodding his thanks as James heaps a generous portion of the dish for him, “I’d appreciate it if you weren’t friends with my ex-husband, but here we are.”
He tries to bring levity to the situation, even if it doesn’t sit quite right with him that James has stayed in touch with Remus. They have been friends since grade school, though, so he tries to cut him some slack. He supposes it wouldn’t be fair to ask of him to just not be friends with someone who’s been in his life for decades just because he’s not married to another one of his friends anymore.
James at least has the decency to blush and look down as he serves Regulus and then himself. The brothers sit in amicable silence as James carefully rests the pot on the round marble trivet some distant relative or other gave him and Regulus as a wedding gift, then presses a soft kiss to Regulus’s temple before settling into his seat so they can have dinner.
Sirius doesn’t fail to note the absence of wine at the table, and he feels a stab of guilt right beneath his heart as he takes a sip of his water. While he’s appreciative of their support on his sobriety journey and it made sense for them to keep their booze away from him when he first got sober, it’s been long enough—he thinks—for the presence of alcohol on the table to not trigger him, and so their persistent abstinence in his presence makes him feel like he’s a burden. Not that he’d ever bring it up. But he knows they’re both wine connoisseurs and regularly tour wineries in France and Italy when they go on vacation. Regulus probably has a specific wine in their cellar that he knows pairs particularly well with the kind of pasta dish James has prepared—after all, they did all the taste tests as they were working on the menu for James’s restaurant—but they’re forced to sip on iced water for Sirius’s benefit.
He winces; not only did he put them all through hell before he forced himself into AA, but he’s making their lives more difficult now. Nothing new under the sun in the life of Sirius Black, he supposes.
“You know,” he says, keeping his eyes trained on the grandfather clock on the wall behind James and Regulus, a family heirloom that did, in fact, once belong to James’s grandfather, “you don’t have to abstain because of me.”
The quick glance between them doesn’t escape his notice but he pretends, for their sake, that it has. He’s long since come to terms with the fact that his best mate in the whole world now has a secret language he speaks only with Sirius’s baby brother.
“It’s fine, really,” James says with a tense smile, hand gripping his fork a little too tight. It was James who played a central role in convincing—or rather, forcing—Sirius to get sober but it put a strain on their friendship that still goes taut sometimes; they try to be gentle about it. It’s really not a hurdle that’s easy to get over when your best mate decides to deal with his divorce by going on a three-year-long drinking binge that ends with his car totaled and nearly puts him in the hospital, especially when you’re the lucky bastard who gets to pick up the pieces.
He doesn’t know if James will ever forgive him for that phone call he made from the side of the road, slurring his words as the cars were whooshing past him. He knows he’s never forgiven himself, so he can’t blame him.
“I got my twelve-month chip,” Sirius offers after a charged silence that feels like it lasts forever, and reaches into the pocket of his jeans to pull it out. It feels heavy in his palm, much heavier than he knows it actually is, and he squeezes it in his fist out of habit before placing it gently on the table.
“That’s great!”
The wide grin that blooms on James’s face is more genuine now, but it’s his brother Sirius is looking at, his heart almost exploding at the slight upturn of Regulus’s lips. Despite years of healing and mending the chasm between them brought about by their tumultuous childhood, he still struggles sometimes to accept that Regulus no longer sees him as the enemy.
When he mouths a voiceless “I’m proud of you,” Sirius has to look away to stop the traitorous tears prickling his eyes from falling.
After dinner, he offers to help clean up. The truth is, he’s really not looking forward to going back to an empty house; not when James and Regulus’s is full of light and laughter, and the soft tune of a James Taylor record playing in the background.
“You’re sure you can’t make it?” he asks, voice almost pleading, as he reaches out and takes the plate Regulus is handing him and dries it with the polishing cloth.
“Yeah,” Reg almost winces, turning away from him and directing all his attention to—a little too meticulously—scrubbing the pasta pot, “We’re having Harry over for a couple of weeks.”
Sirius puts the plate away, then leans against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms in front of his chest. There’s a bird perched on a branch right outside the French window and he watches it make its way higher up the tree.
“How’s he doing?” he asks.
“Oh, you know,” Regulus shrugs, “He’s spending some time with Lily and Dora now, then he’ll spend some time with us, before—”
“Look at you, little brother,” Sirius grins at him, “When’d you get old enough to have a kid who’s getting married?”
Regulus shoots daggers at him over his shoulder, but he finds it rather hard to find him any degree of threatening when he’s wearing his reading glasses atop his head and has got a bright yellow pair of rubber gloves on. Sirius only offers him a smile in response, then heaves a charged sigh.
“I should probably head home,” he says at last, feeling the leaden weight of dread descend upon him. They keep telling him he should get a dog, now that his kid is out of the house and in school, and he’s a recovering alcoholic and divorcé with nothing going on in his life. Maybe he should follow their advice.
Regulus turns the tap off and turns around to look at him. It feels like an eternity before he glances away, and Sirius feels like he’s being read like an open book. A shudder runs through him.
“You know what,” Regulus purses his lips in contemplation, “why don’t you stay over? James is watching Love Island and I don’t know if I can handle that on my own.”
“Since when does—” Sirius fights back a snort, “Since when does he watch Love Island?”
“Well,” Reg says dryly, “sometimes I think the only time he’s ever exhibited any semblance of taste is when he married me.”
“That’s questionable,” Sirius shrugs, breaking into a grin, and barely avoids being smacked with the polishing towel as he escapes the kitchen to find James and go make fun of him.
February 2023
The woman’s voice drones on and on, something or other about God’s almighty hand guiding her through her recovery, and Sirius’s mind wanders. This, he feels, is stupid. A waste of his time. His foot taps the floor rhythmically and the boy next to him, no older than 20, with clothes hanging awkwardly around his skeletal frame and sunken face, glances at him with the corner of his eye. The kid—Christ, he’s barely older than Teddy—twists his fingers around his wrist, chewing nervously on the inside of his cheek and Sirius wonders why he’s here.
Same reason they all are, of course: a concerned family member wanted them to get clean so now they have to sit through the torture that is the hour-long Alcoholics Anonymous session in this musty church basement with its grey, threadbare carpet that’s been stained with what looks like grape juice and worn through by thousands of feet. Sirius wants to leave. He really, really doesn’t want to be here, sitting on this rickety wooden chair that creaks every time he moves, in this circle of people who look like they’ve seen better days.
He could leave, of course, but he knows James’s car is parked right outside of the church, and he knows he’s waiting patiently behind the wheel, nose buried in a book Regulus has been begging him to read for months, and he’ll be there to make sure Sirius stays the whole hour. He and Regulus have grown more trustworthy of Sirius and let him come in alone these days, but when he first started coming to these meetings, one of them would accompany him, perched on a chair right next to him, then drive him home in silence and stay for dinner.
They’re pretty content with waiting it out in the car now, and Sirius doesn’t know if he prefers it this way. At least there was a friendly face he could look at then. He rests in his seat and the chair groans as his weight shifts. The kid next to him glances sideways at him again, then continues to fidget.
The woman, much younger than Sirius, her blonde hair that was bleached in a rather tragic manner hanging limply around her face, finally finishes her little spiel and she folds her hands primly in her lap. Her mascara, he notices, has clumped together, and he notices specks of it right beneath her left eye. He needs to focus on the tiny details, or else he might go crazy with the itching beneath his skin, that spidery feeling crawling up his veins that tells him he should go get a drink right after this.
“Sirius?”
He looks up, blinking his confusion away, and realizes the group leader has asked him a question.
“What?” he says dully, and muffled, awkward laughter travels around the circle.
“I asked you if you wanted to share something with us today.”
Sirius would rather take his Doc Martens boots off and eat them rather than share anything with these people but he doesn’t say that. The group leader, too, looks like she’s barely older than Teddy, the ends of her curly blonde hair dyed pink, and she smiles at him from behind her round tortoiseshell glasses. Her gray cardigan should, perhaps, exude an air of comfort but he thinks she looks more like a schoolteacher than someone who can help him through his struggles.
“Not really,” he says at last, feeling a little too hot around the collar. He’s aware that everyone is looking at him, and the idea that he’s being surveyed under a microscope doesn’t sit right with him.
“That’s okay,” the group leader says, as though she is, in fact speaking to a child in a classroom, and she offers him a wide-eyed smile that he supposes must pass for a comforting one. “Whenever you’re ready.”
He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to open up to all these strangers. It is meant to be anonymous, he knows that, but it doesn’t sit right with him to share his problems with the world. Decades away from Walburga haven’t managed to scrub her teachings away from his brain and he feels a burning shame at the prospect of anybody outside the family being made aware of his failings.
Yet he’s here, because his family asked him to. Because James—his brother in so many ways as far as he’s concerned and now, his brother-in-law too—knocked on his door one day and turned his life upside down. No more, he had said, this ends now, and then he sat perched on Sirius’s kitchen island and watched as Sirius took every single bottle of alcohol he had in his house and poured it down the drain, his eyes never once leaving Sirius’s back, then sat by his bed and held his hand while Sirius was going through the worst of withdrawal, and once that was done, drove him to a meeting and sat in the chair next to him, rubbing circles on his back occasionally.
He knows they’re doing it because they care. He knows, deep down in his very core, that they’re doing this out of love, but he misses the nights—and, towards the end there, days, too, when all he could feel was the numbness inside his chest, courtesy of the Johnnie Walker in his freezer. It was better than having to feel all of this. Better than having to think about, better than having to go through life with no protection—
The chairs around the circle start scraping against the disintegrating carpet and he heaves a sigh as he makes a beeline for the door. He makes a quick stop to the bathroom before he has to go outside and report to James that he’s made precisely zero progress today. None of these people’s words stick to him, and he simply doesn’t care. As he’s washing his hands, he looks up to see a man in the mirror he doesn’t recognize.
There’s salt and pepper in his hair now that he’s passed the threshold of forty, but it’s the sunken cheeks, the empty, bloodshot stare, the sparse stubble—because he doesn’t really care enough to shave—that gives him pause. He has no idea who he’s become. He splashes some icy cold water on his face, but it does little to bring even an ounce of all the life that’s seeped out of him.
He raps against the passenger side window and James startles, snapping his book shut and looking around like a deer caught in headlights. Then he notices Sirius and gives him a radiant smile.
“How was it?” he asks as if they’re talking about a trip to the farmer’s market while Sirius fastens his seat belt.
“Like pulling teeth.”
“It gets better.”
“Sure, James.”
It doesn’t. They want him to go four, five times a week, and so he does, but he never feels like it’s doing anything for him. The faces are usually the same. Sometimes, a new one pops up for a day or two. Sometimes, the familiar faces disappear for a while, then come back and talk through tears about how they’ve slipped up, then everyone reminds them how they’re so proud of them for being here nonetheless.
Sirius isn’t proud. He’s just tired.
The leader keeps asking him to talk, but there is little he can say. There are no words to describe the desolate wilderness that once used to be occupied by his heart. He sits on the creaking chair. He taps his foot. He tunes these people out, and wanders through the confines of his mind until they’re done talking and he can catch a silent ride home with James or Regulus.
His life feels like going round in endless circles. Sometimes it’s more of a spiral.
“I’m proud of you, papa ,” Teddy says one night. The image on his phone screen is a little choppy, as Teddy is walking across campus and his connection is far from stable but Sirius appreciates that he finds the time in his busy schedule to FaceTime him. Through the pixelated image he can see tousled blue hair and a pair of warm brown eyes gazing lovingly at him, surrounded by the color-drained, faded colors of a cloudy, frosty-looking Bostonian sky.
“I’m not really—there’s really not much to be proud of here, kid,” he admits through the barbed wire that’s wrapped itself around his throat.
“You’re doing the work, and that’s what matters.”
He sits on the little stool in his kitchen long after Teddy has hung up, bathed in a single ray of yellowing light from the single lightbulb hanging above the kitchen island, and he stares at his interlocked hands, at the wedding band still on his finger because he can’t bring himself to take it off, feeling like he’s just been punched in the gut.
Because he’s not doing the work, not really.
At last, he gets up from his seat and heads for the bedroom. It’s been nearly three years but he’s still not used to going to sleep in an empty bed. Sometimes, he runs his hand along the empty left side, like running his tongue over where there once was a tooth. The gaping hole that he left in his life—the empty side of the closet, the bookshelves where there once were nearly toppling piles of books—he has made no effort to fill it, so that he feels a stabbing pain in his side every time he looks at all the bare spaces.
He pads around the house like a lost dog, trailing into each room to make sure all the lights are off, even though it’s futile—of course they are, no one else inhabits all those hollow rooms that once housed his family. His legs lead him to the refrigerator, which he opens almost out of habit, then realizes he’s not going to find anything. At least not what he needs.
A carton of milk. Leftover takeout boxes. Rotting vegetables that he forgot Regulus bought for him. But no bottle of wine. Not even a six pack of beer. The fridge, too, has empty, gaping holes left in it. No trace of his oatmilk. No more packed lunches for the next day, no neat rows of dairy-free yogurts.
The little light in the back flickers, mocking him, and the fridge starts emitting its annoying, rhythmic beeping that indicates the door has been left open for too long. Sirius slams it shut, then rests his forehead against the cool surface. His car keys, he knows, are right where he tossed them when he came back from work, on top of the toppled pile of unread mail on the coffee table. The analog clock on the microwave reads 20:42. He could still drive to the store. He could still pick up a bottle.
Then the voices in his head will go quiet. Then he won’t have to think, he won’t have to feel any of this.
He thinks of the shame he felt when he told Teddy. How do you even have that conversation with your son? How do you begin to explain that his father is—he struggles to say the word. He knows that’s the first step, admitting that you have a problem but how many times does he have to do that, how many times does he have to face himself in the mirror and say I am an alcoholic before he stops remembering his mother’s disgusted glare gliding up and down, inspecting him from head to toe just to confirm he has, in fact been found lacking?
He walks into the bathroom, runs a cold shower and stands under the icy stream of water until his clothes are soaked and his teeth are chattering, and his hot tears mix with the cold streaks on his cheeks, and he doesn’t feel like driving to the store anymore.
He doesn’t wait for Regulus to pick him up. He drives himself to the church, ignoring the incessant vibrating of his cell phone against his leg. His grip on the steering wheel is so tight that his knuckles have gone white, and spots dance before his eyes as he pulls into a parking spot.
The group leader—her name, he thinks, is Tracey—smiles at him at the door, cheeks pink in the tepid church basement light and she gestures towards the familiar circle of chairs. He’s more fidgety than usual, too focused on the words burning in the back of his throat to notice his surroundings.
“Okay,” Tracey says, not unkindly, “Let’s get started. I’m so, so immensely proud of each and every one of you for being here today.”
A nervous snort escapes Sirius’s lips but she pretends not to have noticed as she goes on, voice soft, as her eyes land on the people in the circle, lingering for a few moments on each of them. “Now who would like to get us started?”
His hand shoots up before he’s had a chance to think about it. If Tracey is surprised at all, she barely shows it beyond a few rapid blinks of her long, thick eyelashes, and she nods encouragingly. Sirius shifts uncomfortably, thinking that he should have probably been paying attention; he has no clue what the etiquette is, so he just stares at the tips of his boots as he starts talking.
“I’m Sirius,” he says with a wobble in his voice that he feels embarrassed by, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, then quickly glances up to meet Tracey’s encouraging smile. When she nods gently, he returns his gaze back to his shoes and keeps talking, even if his throat feels like sandpaper and each word hurts on its way out.
“I…um…I’ve been sober for about, um, about three weeks,” he mumbles with a death rattle, then takes in a deep breath before resuming. “And I almost drove myself to the store last night to pick up a bottle.”
The silence lingers for a few seconds that stretch out before him like years, then he finds his train of thought and picks it back up.
“But I didn’t.”
“But you didn’t,” Tracey says, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. Sirius’s gray-blue eyes meet hers, and he finds himself talking to her, and to her only. It’s easier than thinking about all those strangers looking at him, soaking up his story like vultures—
“Why didn’t you?” the kid that’s been sitting next to him asks and Tracey cocks an eyebrow in warning—they don’t condone much cross-talking—but Sirius shakes his head and replies.
“My son,” he says, and blinks furiously to keep the tears from spilling; he has very little dignity left so he won’t let himself cry, “He said he was proud of me, and I just felt—I felt like I couldn’t do this to him, God knows we’ve put him through enough….”
He lets his voice trail off, then sniffles and quickly adds, “Not that there’s a we anymore, he… my husband, my—my ex-husband, he—Jesus, this is hard,” he rubs his face with his palm, taking another deep, steadying breath.
“Take your time,” Tracey says, her voice Ariadne’s comforting thread for him to follow on his way out of the suffocating labyrinth of his mind.
“This was what, almost three years ago now,” he says, “We’ve been together since we were eighteen, I have spent more than half my life with him, pretty much my entire conscious existence, you know—”
The words trigger memories, images of Rem—of him , walking in through the door just like any other evening, body stiff, lips pursed into a thin line, something’s wrong , tell me what’s wrong , we need to talk .
“We, we grew up together, I don’t really know who I am, what I am without him, I feel like I’m just, I’m just driving down this endless highway with no endpoint in sight and the wheel’s locked and I can’t hit the brakes, I can’t swerve off, it’s just endless momentum. He was my—You know, this is funny because my name is Sirius, you know, brightest star in the sky, people use it for guidance but he—he was my guiding light. And I don’t know what to do without him.”
“Where is he now?” Tracey prompts and he looks up to meet her eyes, pain shooting through him.
“I—he left. Came home one day and said he was done. He couldn’t do this anymore, he didn’t love me, and, you know, I spent my whole life waiting for that moment with bated breath, the day he would say, I’m done with you, I’ve had enough, but when the other shoe dropped, I didn’t—It still took me by surprise.”
Slowly, he lets out a shaky breath and glances down at his hands to see he’s been wringing them nervously, clutching tight enough to leave bruises, repeatedly twisting the wedding band around his finger.
“I’m untethered,” he says, “and for so long I used the booze as a buoy because I didn’t want to sink and drown, but I don’t know what to do now, I don’t know how to be, and— I just don’t want to keep letting people down, you know, but it feels like it’s all I ever do, all I know how to do.”
“You’re here,” Tracey says, reaching across the circle to take his hand, squeezing gently, “and you’re trying, Sirius, so you’ve made the first step towards not letting yourself down, and this is huge.”
His throat burns, and his eyes burn, and as he slumps back in his chair he realizes his entire body is shaking.
“I don’t care about me,” he says at last, “I just care about my kid.”
Regulus’s car is parked next to his in the lot, and he rolls down his window when he sees Sirius approaching. There’s a crease between his eyebrows as he takes off the reading glasses he has to wear now—the years haven’t been kind to his eyes—and he stares at Sirius for what feels like an eternity. Sirius shuffles his feet, looking away awkwardly as he shoves his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. His breath escapes his lips in puffy clouds, but he doesn’t mind the cold. All the warmth has seeped out of his cheeks.
“You weren’t picking up your phone,” Regulus says stiffly.
“Didn’t feel like talking,” Sirius shrugs, then pulls a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds out of his pocket and shoves a cigarette between his lips. It takes a few clicks of his lighter before the flame flickers to life and then he’s desperately inhaling on it, breathing in the smoke like it’s air. Inside his car, Regulus shrugs on his cashmere coat, then joins him outside, leaning on the side of the hood.
“How’d it go?” he asks, after he’s shoved his hand in his brother’s pocket and copped a ciggy.
“Rough,” Sirius says, then adds, between an inhale and an exhale, “Finally got myself to participate.”
His brother remains silent, eyes focused on the sun sinking beneath the horizon, splattering the whole world crimson. The silence between them is good. They’ve grown to patch together most of the tears their parents ripped among them when they were growing up, so that it feels nearly comfortable to sit quietly in each other’s presence.
“Why did he leave?” Sirius asks at last, unable to face his brother’s piercing gaze. These are questions he should have asked a long time ago, but he’s spent the better part of three years at the bottom of his glass, so there’s no time quite like the present. It’s like poking at a raw, open wound, but he does it regardless.
Regulus takes a few drags of his cigarette before he responds.
“What do you want me to say?”
Sirius gives him a half-shrug, his stomach twisting and turning every which way. “The truth?”
He lets out a sigh. “People fall out of love, Siri.”
A street lamp flickers on amid the descending darkness, bathing the triangle of world beneath it a piss yellow. Sirius takes a final drag of his smoke before tossing it on the ground and stubbing it out with the heel of his boot, then wraps his arms around himself.
“I just feel sometimes like I’m fundamentally unlovable.”
“That’s bullshit,” Regulus says in his cool, monotone, no-nonsense voice.
“Mum and dad didn’t love me,” Sirius points out, tongue-in-cheek, and this time he keeps his eyes on his brother, searching for telltale signs that he’s lying. “Remus doesn’t.”
It’s the first time in a long, long while that he’s said his name, and it burns like hellfire inside his ribcage. Regulus takes barely any time to respond.
“Your son loves you,” he flicks his cigarette off and watches the ash descend slowly. “Your nephew loves you.”
“Well, they’re—they’re kids—”
“Effie and Monty loved you, before—you know.”
“Yeah, but—”
“James loves you,” Regulus keeps going. It’s properly dark now, and the burning end of his cigarette reflects off the surface of his glasses. “ I love you.”
It’s gotten easier to say the words, as the years have passed. Once upon a time, neither of them would have been caught dead saying it. And he knows it’s true; he really does, but lately it’s been harder than ever to believe it.
At last, Sirius hangs his head low, letting the tears that have been burning behind his eyes fall freely down his cheeks. Regulus pretends not to notice as he slips his gloves on and pushes his hands deep into his pockets. The parking lot has emptied around them, the rest of the cars trickling out, and it’s just the two of them now.
“What do you need?” his brother asks, once Sirus’s shaky breathing has evened out.
A harsh, barking laughter escapes him, and he rolls his eyes as he says, “A stiff drink.”
“Come on,” Regulus says, placing his hand on Sirius’s back and patting him gently, “James is cooking dinner.”
When the next meeting rolls around, he drives there alone.
“Who would like to get us started?” Tracey asks. She’s exchanged her gray cardigan for a pink one, to match the pink ends of her hair. Her ring-adorned fingers are clasped together in her lap, and her eyes look up to meet Sirius’s as he shakily raises his hand.
“I’m Sirius,” he says, words coming out of his mouth all shaky, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
May 2024
Friday
Harry and George drop him off at Heathrow at the crack of dawn. He watches the buildings blur past them from the backseat, the neon signs and lights of the city painting the world a million colors. Rain pitter-patters in droplets against the windshield, the wet scrape of the windshield wipers against the glass the only sound to disturb the silence. It’s barely over twenty miles from Sirius’s townhouse on Tyrwhitt Road (a quick walk north of Hilly Fields Park where he would sometimes go on runs with Teddy when he still lived here) to the airport, and even in the wee hours before 6 am, it takes them a solid hour to get there. Forehead pressed against the window, Sirius watches as the sky dissolves into pink and red, the sun tearing through the clouds shyly.
His stomach is tied in ribbons, and he hates Remus a little for it. It’s supposed to be a joyous occasion, and instead of being thrilled to bits and proud that his son is graduating uni—and not just any old uni but fucking Harvard—he’s worrying himself sick over having to see his ex. He’s being stupid and he knows it, so he pops his head between the driver’s and the passenger’s seat and chats his nephew up, asking a flurry of questions about the wedding and Lily and Dora’s farm, and about Luna’s marine science PhD program in New Zealand, and the bloody weather, because it’s May but it’s been thundering and hailing incessantly for weeks and what is up with that?
“Thanks for the lift,” he says when they pull up by the airport and exit the car so he can take his bags from the trunk. “You didn’t have to do that, it’s stupid early, and it’s a two-hour round trip, I could’ve just gotten a cab.”
“Don’t be daft,” Harry grins at him and it’s like he’s looking at James a good couple of decades ago, with his hair a mess and his little one-sided dimple, and Lily’s green eyes bright against the copper of his skin. “Always good to spend some time with Uncle Siri,” he winks before throwing his arms around Sirius in a tight bear hug.
“Love you,” Sirius says, patting him on the shoulder as he pulls away from him, “You be good and listen to your dads, alright? Good to see you.”
He’s a little reluctant to let go, both because he’s a nervous flier, and because it’s rarer and rarer these days to get to spend any time with Harry, who’s turned into a groupie of sorts, traveling around the globe with George and his twin while he’s finishing his dissertation..
“Just my dads? Can’t wait to tell mum, she’ll be thrilled to hear you don’t think I have to listen to her.”
“Oi,” Sirius pokes him in the ribs, “Don’t be a smart arse.”
He throws his arms around George too, and rubs his back. “Happy to see you as well, kid,” he offers, then adds, “You look after him, he likes to cause trouble.”
“Not my fault trouble always finds me,” Harry shrugs nonchalantly and George throws his head back laughing as he wraps an arm around his fiance and presses a kiss against his cheek. Sirius’s heart does a weird somersault in his chest at the sight; he’s truly happy for Harry, yet he can’t help but be reminded of just how lonely the past four years of his life have been. Perhaps he could start dating—not again, because he never really dated anyone before Remus—but he’s not sure that’s something he wants to subject himself to on the threshold of his fifties.
Remus was always the one who insisted on getting there hours before a flight—especially an international one—but the habit has rubbed off on him after two decades, so he sits at the gate, repeatedly going through his backpack to make sure, for the seventeenth time, that his passport isn’t sitting at the edge of his dresser but is safely tucked into his inner pocket. He paces back and forth nervously, then ends up buying himself a coffee when he’s determined that he’s definitely at the right gate, and he’s definitely packed all his paperwork, and his flight is definitely on time.
He tries—and miserably fails—to not think about Remus. The last time he saw him was the day they signed the divorce papers in Emily’s office. They’d sat mere feet away from each other and Remus hadn’t even looked at him once for the entirety of the hour they’d spent there. When he’d picked up the heavy fountain pen Emily had handed him to place his signature at the bottom of the page, Sirius had noticed that his hand was shaking, badly, and he’d wondered what that had been about and whether perhaps Remus was having second thoughts but he’d signed and walked away without even a nod in his direction. In the weeks that passed between Teddy’s flight to Boston and the day they signed the papers, he doesn’t think Remus said more than five words to him.
He wonders what it’s going to feel like to finally lay eyes on him again, what he’s going to look like after four years of battling illness. He tried, when he found out he was sick, to reach out, but he never responded to any of his messages or picked up any of his calls. From what James and Teddy, and on occasion Lily and Harry, have told him, he’s gathered that he’s doing well and mostly has his symptoms under control now, even if he has to live with chronic pain. He wonders if he, too, is lonely, or if he’s found a shoulder to lean on after he left.
It’s a seven-and-a-half-hour flight from Heathrow to Logan. Sirius spends the majority of it squeezing his sobriety chip in his sweaty palm as he watches the couple sitting next to him order glass after glass of champagne. It normally doesn’t bother him, but today, of all days, his nerves are frayed and the urge to slip back into the comforting lull of alcohol to soften the edge of his anxiety is overwhelming.
When they land at Logan, he rushes through customs and baggage claim like his life depends on it, just so he can step outside and take deep gulps of cool air. While he’s waiting for his Uber, he smokes three cigarettes in quick succession, rocking back and forth on his heels to self-soothe. Although Teddy offered to pick him up at the airport, Sirius said it was fine and he’d make his way to the hotel on his own, especially after Teddy mentioned Remus’s flight was getting there earlier than Sirius’s and he was going to help him settle in. He tries to chase Remus away from his thoughts and focus on—and get excited about—other things, like finally meeting Victoire, Teddy’s girlfriend, in person, after he’s heard so much about her for the better part of four years (and what a rollercoaster the entire ordeal has been, with Teddy still pining after his high school boyfriend for most of his freshman year and being confused by his crush on Vic, then finally befriending her just as she was starting to date her then-roommate, Olivia, then the two of them getting together at last right before Christmas).
By the time his Uber drops him off in front of his hotel (“It’s where they filmed The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, papa, I can’t believe I was able to book you a room early enough that they still had rooms available,” Teddy had rhapsodized over it), it’s close to five p.m., and Sirius is more than ready for a nap, or some food, or both. He smokes another cigarette outside of the hotel, watching the crowds in Copley Square, the groups of tourists taking pictures of the church to his right and the groups of students walking out of the Boston Public library to his right, as he basks in the sunlight. A couple walks by carrying a Cheesecake Factory bag and he quickly notes this would be a great dinner option before heading inside to check in.
“Hi,” he says to the receptionist, a tall lanky redhead with a freckled face, “I have a room booked—uhm, it should be under Lupin ? I can spell that for you.”
Teddy had insisted on booking their rooms, especially after he’d landed his prestigious summer internship at Perkins&Will the previous summer, and he’d reluctantly agreed, but he regrets it now. It took a long while after the divorce for him to get used to being Sirius Black again, after twenty years of being a Lupin, and this is just another painful reminder of all that he’s lost.
“Oh, no, no need—ah yes, there it is,” the receptionist says with a rather thick Bostonian accent, then reaches for a key and hands it to Sirius with a wide grin, “with a lovely view of Trinity Church. Elevator’s over there down the hall, you’re on the second floor as close to the elevator as possible for accessibility purposes, our restaurant is open for dinner until eleven and breakfast is served at seven tomorrow, and please let me know if there is anything I can help you with.”
Sirius blinks rapidly, trying to absorb all the information that’s been hurled at him, then nods.
“Thank you…” his eyes search for a name tag and quickly find it pinned to the receptionist's chest, “Scott, thank you, Scott.”
“No worries, Mr. Lupin,” the man beams up at him and Sirius tries to ignore the sudden pang in his chest, “enjoy your stay and your time in Boston. Do you need help with getting your bags up to your room?”
“No,” he says, offering a tight-lipped smile, “no thank you, I’ll manage.”
He’s already dreaming of a steaming hot shower and a long nap, and then maybe DoorDashing a giant piece of cheesecake for dinner, so when he first walks into the room, he doesn’t notice the telltale signs: the suitcase by the bed, the veritable pharmacy of medication spread out on the nightstand, the Donna Tartt novel with a cracked spine and a plane ticket tucked between the pages in lieu of a bookmark. It’s only when he hears the water running in the shower that he realizes the room is already occupied.
His heart drops to his stomach as he takes a couple of tentative steps into the room, closely examining the personal items scattered around the place. There, casually thrown over the armrest of an armchair, is a cable-knit brown sweater he distinctly remembers wrapping as a present five Christmases ago. The suitcase, too, is a familiar, well-loved and heavy-worn piece that they’ve owned since Teddy was about six. And there, by the book on the coffee table is a travel mug he recognizes from seven or eight birthdays ago, with the paint on it slightly chipped from when they drove up to Scotland for Lily and Dora’s anniversary and he dropped it at a gas station.
Sirius puts down his duffel bag on the plush-carpeted floor and takes a few more steps into the room, picking up a discarded T-shirt off the bed. Gently, uncertain, he holds it up to his face and breathes the scent in, fully aware that if he’s wrong, what he’s doing is beyond weird, and even if he’s right, it’s marginally less weird at best. There’s no mistaking the smell of mint and honey, and ink, and Dove soap, a scent so familiar he knows it like the back of his hand. He’s so startled by these scraps of his old life so casually strewn across a hotel room halfway across the world that he doesn’t realize the water is no longer running in the shower.
“Oh,” he hears, and it’s a voice he would recognize anywhere, a voice capable of tearing him apart and putting him back together, a voice he’s hated for the past four years and loved for most of his life.
He turns around and finds himself face-to-face with none other than Remus Lupin, wrapped in a fluffy white robe, with his cheeks flushed and his sandy curls wet and tousled, and a cane clutched in his right hand.
All he can do is blink.