Chapter 3
November 2020
Sirius stumbles into a cold, empty house shrouded in darkness. His first instinct is to shout out “I’m home,” like he’s done every day for the past two decades of his life, but the words die on the tip of his tongue as soon as he remembers that it’s futile; there is no one there to hear them. By his calculations, it has been one hundred and sixteen days since Teddy left for Harvard and one hundred and fifteen days since Remus moved out, and he’s not even slightly embarrassed by the fact that he’s been keeping a tally in his head, crossing the days off as if that’s going to change anything. A layer of dust and staleness clings to every surface, turning his once safe and cozy home into a wretched place to be in. All that’s left now are the ghosts of evenings past.
He walks into the kitchen without bothering to turn the lights on and ignores the towering pile of empty and half-empty takeout containers that’s threatening to topple off the counter as he pours himself a drink into an unwashed glass tumbler he left on the coffee table the night before. The whisky—not his first of the day—burns down his throat in a way he’s come to associate with comfort, and he downs it in one go, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he’s done.
The incessant tick-tick-ticking of the clock indicates that there’s still a couple of hours left before the usual time Teddy FaceTimes him. He’s grown to despise the five-hour difference between them because all he really wants is to drown at the bottom of the glass but he has to keep some semblance of composure until he’s had his regularly scheduled chat with his kid before he fully loses himself in the drink.
He slumps onto the sofa and stares blankly at the ceiling, desperate to fill the aching gap in his chest that he’s foolishly hoped would have started to heal by now. Teddy, at least, has been doing well, blissfully ignorant of his parents’ separation. He’s fit right in at his school, and he’s enjoying—and thriving in—his classes. Not that they ever doubted he would: he’s Remus’s son after all. More than anything, Sirius is grateful for Teddy’s roommate, TJ, who’s become one of his closest friends and who, he hopes, will be a solid support system for him once Teddy inevitably finds out the truth.
On his first afternoon at school, Teddy had called him, thrumming with excitement, and had rambled on and on about how great and how cool his roommate was and how Papa, you won’t believe this but he has two mums, he thought I was messing with him when I said I had two dads! Sirius’s heart is filled to the brim with love and appreciation for TJ’s mums, Luci and Brandi, who have all but adopted Teddy into their already huge family consisting not only of their own five biological children but also their three foundlings, TC, Dorcas, and Laney, whom Teddy raves about all the time. As a parent, being three thousand and three hundred miles away from your child, unable to help at a moment’s notice if he ever needs anything, has made his already hellish existence all the more difficult. Knowing that his son has found a surrogate family halfway across the world, much like Sirius himself did with the Potters, has at least provided him with some much needed peace of mind.
Now Teddy’s staying with them for Thanksgiving because the short break he and TJ have from school for the holiday is too short to justify the jetlag for him to come home, not when Christmas is so close by and he’ll be flying back to London anyways. Dread fills Sirius up at the thought because as soon as Teddy lands, their little charade is going to be up and they’re going to have to tell him they’re not together anymore. They don’t even talk to each other.
How do you even try to have that conversation with your kid? He’s so filled with bitterness and anger that his blood boils at the very thought of Remus, but he doesn’t have it in him to say anything cruel or mean to Teddy about his Da. Hey, kid, so, just so you know, your father left me because he doesn’t love me anymore and I don’t even know if he ever did since he confirmed my deepest, darkest fear that I’m fundamentally unlovable at my core and everybody is going to leave me someday, but like. We’re still cool. You just have to split holiday time between us now because we can’t even bear to be in the same room as each other. Yeah, perfect Christmastime talk.
With a groan, Sirius pushes himself off the sofa and stumbles out into the garden. The stars have started to come out, sparkling glimmers of light in the ink black sky, and he looks up at it, searching for the heavy round face of the yellow moon, just days away from being full. She looks like she’s mocking him, or maybe it’s just his imagination. He doesn’t look for himself in the sky anymore; he fears he’s truly lost now and doesn’t even really want to be found, and what’s the point of any of it anyways?
He quit smoking years ago, but he’s picked the habit back up, now that his days have little else but work to be consumed by, and that, as fulfilling as it should be, does little to stop the whirlwind of self-hatred that ravages his very core. He pulls out a Marlboro Red from the crumpled pack in his pocket and lights it with a shaky hand, then sits in Teddy’s old swing set and smokes the cigarette in silence. The tips of his boots scrape the sand as he swings back and forth lightly, blowing smoke rings as he does so. The loneliness has become almost all-consuming, seeping so deep into his bones he thinks it’s melded into them. Once his video chat with Teddy is done, he’ll go back to drinking. Maybe he’ll put something dumb on the telly to take his mind off from the numbing pain that pulses through him, although that’s always a dangerous game to play just in case he lands on a channel that’s showing something he used to watch with Remus.
By the time Teddy calls, he’s given up and poured himself a heavy pour of the Macallan, which he’s trying to take his time with rather unsuccessfully. He takes a big swig from the tumbler, then pushes it far away from himself in a futile attempt to slow his drinking down, knowing full well he’ll find himself reaching for the glass soon enough.
“Hey Papa,” his kid grins from the tiny screen and, despite everything, he feels his heart throb with love. It’s been entirely too long since he last hugged his son and he can’t wait to hold him in his arms again, especially now that he’s fully outgrown that teenager phase of finding it embarrassing to hug your parents.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says with a melancholy smile, “you having a good time over there?”
He can glimpse in the background what looks like a well-loved and well-lived-in home, with various photos of the family’s many (“Eight! Isn’t that crazy? I’d kill for one sibling, let alone seven!” Teddy had exclaimed) children hung up on the walls, and a near-constant stream of people scurrying around the living room behind Teddy, arms full of a sundry of knick-knacks.
“It’s a full house,” Teddy glances over his shoulder to observe what’s going on in the kitchen. He’s been there for a couple of days and has already met the kids that still live with their mums, but the rest of them, he mentioned in an earlier text, are arriving today and he’s been pumped to meet them all for weeks.
“Everyone’s being nice to you?” Sirius asks, even if he already knows the answer. From what he’s heard, Luci and Brandi have taken his kid in with open arms and made their house a safe place for him, just as they have for TC, Dorcas, and Laney, all three of whom Teddy tells him have just landed and are “all so cool you have no idea, especially TC and Laney.”
“I’m just hopping on for a quick call,” Teddy says, running his hands through his rowdy hair—God, he’s grown so much in just a few months, he’ll probably be taller than Remus when he comes home—trying to tame it in a manner that’s indicative of just how much time Teddy spent with his uncle James growing up.
“No worries,” is Sirius’s instantaneous response, even as he feels a stab beneath his ribs. All he lives for these days is the thirty or so minutes he gets to spend on the phone with Teddy, and the prospect of that time getting cut short makes his hand itch to reach for his drink.
“Yeah, TJ and Katie are helping Brandi and Luci with dinner and Cub and Dorcas are playing with Ben, and I think TC and Laney were going to watch Jurassic Park with Jill, so I don’t wanna, you know,” he shrugs in what Sirius notes looks like a very grown-up manner, “be rude and on my phone when I’m over at someone’s house for dinner, my Papa taught me better than this.”
Sirius laughs at that, because he has, in fact, told Teddy way too many times how rude he’s being when he’s on his phone all the time, and has to concede that it would be hypocritical to keep him on the call for too long.
“Well,” he says, “thank Brandi and Luci for me, for how well they’re treating you—”
“And feeding me,” Teddy adds with a grin, glancing over his shoulder at where the two women must be, “I fear they’re way better cooks than you or Da. But I don’t have to go right away, I can stay on the call for a while.”
“I miss you, kid,” Sirius finds himself admitting, and finally gives up, pulls his glass closer and takes a swig from his drink to keep the tears at bay. He can cry later, when he hangs up. No need to make his kid upset, too.
“Yeah, yeah,” Teddy blushes, “Miss you too, Papa .”
They talk for a while longer, as Teddy tells him about the drive down to TJ’s house, about the Bagginshiled fanfiction Luci has been writing (“Did you know Bilbo was gay?! News to me, even though Da said it was really obvious in the movies.”), about the family trivia game they’re going to play later that night, about Teddy’s midterm in his introductory architecture class and the paper he’s been writing for his freshman composition class, and about this French girl in his gen ed math class who is “super smart and super pretty” (“And way out of his league,” TJ calls out as he’s passing by, a large pie in his hands.). Sirius’s heart sinks at just how quickly Teddy has moved on, has become a separate person, how he’s started to carve out a new life for himself that’s no longer tethered to his parents, and he’s all of a sudden overcome by breathtaking sadness.
“Oh,” Teddy adds, almost as an afterthought, “and I’ve started training for the Boston marathon.”
He’s been an avid runner for a few years, a hobby he rather unenthusiastically picked up in high school but has fallen in love with since, and he’s stubbornly stuck with it even after he moved halfway across the world, forever rambling about improving his mile time and doing “fartleks” (which he forced Sirius to do once and he’s never doing again), and the running club he’s joined since he moved to Boston.
“That’s—well, that’s amazing, Teddy,” Sirius grins at him, always his son’s greatest cheerleader, even when he had to crew for him in the pouring rain the last time he ran the London marathon.
“Yeah, Dorcas is going on their long run tomorrow morning and I’m going with them,” he waves enthusiastically, “I usually just do the Esplanade in Boston but they’re taking me on a trail run, so it’s exciting, and they think it’s so cool that I’m doing it for a cause—”
“Wait,” Sirius interrupts, rubbing his eyes and cussing himself out for being so pissed already that he’s forgetting parts of the conversation he’s currently having, “what cause?”
“Well, this Multiple Sclerosis charity organization I’ve joined, that’s how I’ll be able to run without a qualifying time at another marathon—”
“Multiple Sclerosis?” Sirius interrupts him, even more confused now, “That’s random—I mean, good for you, but—”
As soon as the words leave Sirius’s mouth, he realizes he’s said something wrong because Teddy’s face falls. A crease forms on his brow as the gears start turning in his head and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat, a searching look in his eyes.
“Why—why would it be random?” His voice has gone cold and Sirius wonders for a split second if he’s forgotten about a close friend of Teddy’s who has MS, racking his brain for any glimpse of a memory of a distant mention. Teddy starts chewing on his lip, a nervous habit he’s had since he was a child, then he glances at his watch.
“Papa,” he asks and there’s an edge to it, “is Da there?”
They’ve been lucky; so, so lucky that Teddy hasn’t noticed they’re always alone when he calls either of his parents, and he usually has so much stuff he wants to talk about that Sirius somehow always manages to end the call before Remus ever comes up. He curses under his breath, not at all sure what he’s done to slip up now because Teddy hasn’t asked that question once in the numerous conversations they’ve had since he left.
“Well, he’s, uhm, he’s—I think he’s working late tonight, he had a—a thing at work, a guest lecture I think, or—” he stumbles on his words, his mind wrapped in a thick, liquor-addled fog that prevents him from coming up with a clever lie on the spot. Shit. This is so stupid, and so easily preventable, and he should have anticipated it was going to happen eventually, but he doesn’t really know what to do about it now. He has no idea where Remus is, or what he’s doing, and he doubts Remus would even tell him if he asked.
Teddy leans back in his seat, crossing his arms, an unreadable expression plastered on his face, and Sirius knows he’s fucked up, he’s massively fucked up, but he doesn’t know how to fix it because he doesn’t know what it is he’s done wrong.
“I’m—I’m glad you mentioned it, actually,” he says, tongue-tied, “I’ll—I’ll have to give him a call, see why he’s so late—”
Slowly, Teddy exhales through his mouth, trying to steady his breathing, but his voice is shaking when he finally speaks. “Can you stop lying to me?”
Sirius blinks as though he’s been slapped. If there is one thing he’s tried to not do wrong with his kid, it’s building trust. That, he realizes, has now been irrevocably lost, due to his and Remus’s frankly moronic decision to keep this whole mess a secret from Teddy. What were they thinking ?
“I—what?” he lets out, knowing full well he’s not fooling Teddy anymore.
“Da’s in Auchmantle,” Teddy says coolly, “Visiting Aunt Lily and Dora’s farm.” He quickly glances away, throat bobbing in a telltale sign that he’s close to tears, “and has been for a week now—”
“Teddy—”
“No, don’t—Don’t Teddy me, papa,” his voice is barely above a rugged whisper now, “You couldn’t have—I don’t know, coordinated your lies with him? What the fuck , dad?
Sirius buries his face in his hands. The room is suddenly spinning and he regrets his last glass of whisky because he’s struggling to get a grip as the world crumbles from beneath his feet once more, in the very same room it did just a few months ago.
“Teddy—”
“You don’t even know he’s sick ?” There’s something broken in the way he utters the last word, like his heart has been ripped out and he can’t breathe properly, and Sirius has never felt more disgusted in himself than he does at this very moment, as it dawns on him just how much he has hurt his own kid and that there is no going back from this moment.
“Teddy, please,” he tries one more time, leaning towards his phone screen as though he can reach out for him and hold him. It takes a while for what his son is saying to sink in. Sick? Remus is sick? Since when?
“Don’t talk to me,” Teddy snaps, “at least until you’ve sorted all your lies out.”
He hangs up before Sirius has had a chance to say anything else and doesn’t pick up again.
His heart slamming furiously against the bars of his ribcage, Sirius pours himself another drink, draining the remnants of the bottle into his glass, then finishes it in two large gulps, no longer feeling it burn at the back of his throat, finally numb to everything. He feels like he’s going to throw up, so he finds himself lying flat on his back on the cold kitchen floor in oppressive darkness, trying to stop the room from spinning. Finally, he forces himself up on his feet so he can find his phone and, with his hands shaking, he texts James.
did you know remus has ms??
The texts come in quick succession, too soon for Sirius’s comfort, and he wonders if Teddy’s called his uncles and whether they’ve been waiting for Sirius to reach out.
Yeah. I should have told you, I’m sorry.
And then, He just really didn’t want you to know. I’m sorry.
It finally makes sense to Sirius, all of it. He rummages through his liquor cabinet that he’s been keeping relatively well-stocked these days, then pulls out another bottle of Macallan. He used to be a wine person, but the Scotch has been doing a much better job of filling up the void in his chest. This time, he doesn’t even bother with a glass.
He finds that he quite enjoys the coolness of the kitchen floor, so he finds himself down there again, pulling up threads about multiple sclerosis on his phone. Halfway through the bottle, he stops reading and opens up his messaging app, staring blankly at his text chain with Regulus and wondering if it’s too pathetic to send a message like that at eleven p.m. on a Thursday.
no wonder he left me
he’s got an illness that could potentially kill him
why would he want to spend whatever little time he has left with me
He doesn’t wait for a response. He flings his phone across the room, then wraps his hand around the throat of the bottle and lifts it up to his mouth, then chugs, letting the tears stream freely down his face.
May 2024
Saturday
When he returns to the hotel room, Sirius finds Remus sitting in bed with a pile of papers and a red pen, scribbling furiously in the margins, a pair of thin-rimmed reading glasses he’s never seen before perched on the bridge of his nose. Barely sparing a glance in his direction, he rushes to the bathroom where he runs himself an ice cold shower. For what seems like an eternity, he sits on the floor and lets the water stream pummel hard against his back until he feels numb and detached from his body. It’s like he has lived a thousand lifetimes in the past several hours.
A pair of extra pillows and a comforter await him in a neat pile on the sofa and someone—Remus, he suspects—has put a flat sheet on. Ignoring the wave of warmth and appreciation that unspools inside his stomach, he forces a neutral expression on his face and glances in Remus’s direction.
“Thanks,” Sirius says, voice barely above a whisper, and the word claws its way out of his dry throat scorching through the flesh.
“Don’t mention it,” Remus doesn’t bother to look up from the essay he’s grading, flipping a page over with a tsk . Shaking his head, he lets out an exasperated groan that makes Sirius long for the days he’d peek over Remus’s shoulder while he was reading students’ work and he’d rub his back while Remus complained about the declining rates of media literacy and reading comprehension.
Sirius curls up under the comforter, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a tattered copy of Babel —his book club is reading it and he’s borrowed Regulus’s well-loved paperback, with color-coded tabs sticking out from the side and pristine, detailed annotations written out in the margins in black ink—but he quickly realizes he won’t ever be able to focus on the book, with its intricate plot and its many footnotes. For every other sentence he reads, he glances up at Remus, furtively observing the nightly rituals he’s no longer privy to. It’s the oddest thing, becoming an outside observer, a stranger to a life that was once tethered to yours like an umbilical cord, so intimately entwined that they might as well have been one and the same.
When he’s had enough of grading, Remus takes off his glasses and sets the pile of papers aside on the nightstand, then stares wistfully at his book as though he really wants to reach for it. He thinks better of it and squeezes his eyes shut instead to give them some much needed rest. An alarm goes off on his phone and he sighs heavily as he pulls out his small pharmacy’s worth of medication, which he places in a neat heap on the table. Instead of water, he takes one of his dairy-free strawberry yogurts out of the mini fridge and places his pills into spoonfuls of yogurt that he swallows with a weary expression on his face.
Sirius can almost pretend that they’re back to normal, that it’s a regular evening back home after they’ve both had long and exhausting days and can’t quite muster the energy to talk but simply enjoy doing their own thing in the presence of the other. Then Remus groans in pain and discomfort as he sinks back into the bed and starts slowly rubbing some relief into his calves which, in turn, seems to hurt his hands so quickly gives up on this endeavor. From the other end of the hotel room, Sirius watches, stomach sinking in, as he imagines joining Remus on the bed and pulling his legs into his lap, softly massaging the pain away from his calves and thighs the way he used to do once. Except he can’t do that anymore because he hates Remus, and Remus hates him even more, and he shouldn’t crave that kind of intimacy with the person who has completely wrecked his life. Yet a part of him does, and he has no clue what to do with it.
He returns his attention to Babel , gluing his eyes to the pages but when he finds himself reading the same sentence over and over again for the fifth time, he finally slams the book shut and glances up at Remus again. It’s a split second but he can almost swear he caught Remus looking at him, too. He must have imagined it, or else he would have felt the hateful glare on his skin.
“Do you need the light?” Remus asks dryly and Sirius shakes his head no.
“I’ll get it,” he offers, conscious of the fifteen or so steps Remus would have to walk to turn it out himself, and refuses to take Remus’s no for an answer.
It quickly becomes clear that the sofa wasn’t meant for hotel guests to sleep on, and Sirius tosses and turns, flipping the pillows over and trying to fluff them out. Despite all his efforts, he knows he’ll be stiff and sore for the next few days, but what’s a little discomfort in these circumstances? What is he supposed to do anyways, go lie in the bed next to Remus?
A couple of hours in, he gives up on sleep and stares blankly at the ceiling instead, searching for imaginary cracks in the plaster. He listens as Remus gets out of bed and limps to the bathroom and back three or four times. He considers complaining at Reception that their supposed disability accommodations room isn’t all that accessible if the bathroom is that far from the bed, then decides he doesn’t have the standing to make that complaint. After all, he’s no one to Remus, not really, at least not anymore.
“Sirius?” he hears Remus’s soft, breathy voice call out when he’s safely returned to bed after his most recent bathroom trip.
For a brief, charged moment, he considers pretending to be asleep, then, craving Remus’s voice, his attention, he replies, just as softly, almost fearfully, “Yeah?”
“Can’t sleep?”
He glances towards the bed where Remus’s tousled curls poke out from beneath the duvet, half his face lit up by the rays of silver moonlight slipping through the gap in the curtains and something deep inside his chest aches in a way he can’t name. The lie is on his tongue, but then he opens his mouth and, to his own surprise, it’s the truth that comes out.
“No, not really.”
“I could tell,” Remus whispers back, and it feels like they’re doing something clandestine, something forbidden. “Your breathing, it—sounded all wrong.”
The silence that lingers between them after this admission is charged, heavy. Sirius doesn’t know what to do with this information, that Remus is still so familiar with the patterns of his breathing that he can tell something is bothering him. He chooses to ignore it because any other course of action would be akin to self-flagellation.
“It’s fine,” he replies at last.
“Come to bed,” Remus says.
Those three words feel like a weight crushing the breath out of Sirius, hairline fractures spreading across his ribcage until each inhale and exhale hurts, the bones threatening to splinter and impale his traitorous heart.
“That’s presumptuous,” he offers dryly, heart stammering in his chest unevenly.
He doesn’t dare look at Remus but can feel his eyes burning through his skin in the dark. And then, because he’s still angry and bitter, even after all the years that lie between them now, he adds, “Is there room for me in that bed between you and all your hatred?”
Remus doesn’t say anything but Sirius can tell he’s hurt him. Good.
“You should stop being a stubborn, prideful fool,” Remus whispers after a while, “I just thought—I know what it’s like for your entire body to be all sore and achy. I don’t want that for you.”
“Wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, huh?” Sirius can’t help himself but shoot back, but all he feels is an ache in his core at the very idea that Remus walks through life in constant pain.
Remus sighs and turns his back to him, ducking beneath the covers.
It takes another hour of tossing and turning, and a stiffness spreading down his spine for Sirius to finally cave. Barefoot, he pads across the room and stands at the edge of the bed, watching Remus’s back rise and fall in rhythm with his breathing. It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself as he slides under the covers on the right side of the bed. This changes absolutely nothing.
With a sigh, Remus turns around in his sleep so that he’s facing Sirius. He looks tired, yet restless, his cheeks hollower than Sirius remembers them, but still infuriatingly beautiful. The need to reach out and push the hair off his forehead, to smooth over the crease in his brow with his thumb is hurried, desperate, but Sirius shoves it somewhere deep inside. Although he usually sleeps on his side, he forces himself to stay flat on his back so he doesn’t have to look at Remus. The bed is infinitely more comfortable, and he finds himself drifting off to an uneasy sleep, every single inch of his body aflame with awareness that Remus is an arm’s reach away.
He jerks awake when he feels the breath of a touch against his skin. Slowly, his eyelids flutter open and he sees, with the corner of his eye, the tips of Remus’s fingers brushing against his bicep, Remus’s extended arm filling the empty space between them in the bed. He appears to be fast asleep, subconsciously reaching for Sirius in his dream, and Sirius freezes in his place, his breath shaky and unsteady.
In the pink light of dawn slowly creeping in through the window, Remus looks peaceful at last, but Sirius knows there will be no more peace for him in this bed. He gives himself thirty seconds that stretch out like infinity in which he simply sits there and watches Remus sleep, yearning to reach out for him across the great divide that gapes between them. Then he springs out of bed and forces himself to go for a quick jog, the early morning chill miserable enough against his skin to push all other thoughts away.
A couple of blocks away from the hotel, he spots a Blank Street Coffee, a place he and Remus often frequented in London for their Sunday brunch dates, back when there was a “he an Remus.” He gets himself an iced coffee, black, and sits at a table outside the coffeeshop, compulsively smoking one cigarette after another and feigning interest in the gilded details on the building above the store window, trying—and failing miserably—not to think about what it felt to wake up next to Remus again. About how he gets to do it again tonight.
When Remus wakes up, he finds a scone and an iced oat milk matcha from Blank Street Coffee, his usual order, waiting for him at the table. Scribbled on a napkin—in painfully familiar handwriting that he last saw when he was signing their divorce papers—is a note.
helping Teddy pack his stuff up in Cambridge, see you later —S
“I swear,” Teddy says from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, “I have no idea how that happened. I booked two rooms under Lupin, I distinctly remember saying we needed two separate rooms, I’m sorry papa —”
Sirius offers him a sad smile, and realizes, with a sharp stab underneath his ribs, that he doesn’t have the heart to correct him; he’s not a Lupin anymore, and hasn’t been in years.
“It’s okay, kiddo,” he shrugs, “it’s not a big deal.”
He cannot let his child bear his burdens.
Teddy cocks an eyebrow, clocking the lie for what it is, but doesn’t call Sirius out for it. Instead, he keeps neatly stacking books inside the Home Depot moving box he’s bought off of some kid that lives down the hall. In the four years he’s been at Harvard, he has somehow ended up collecting so much stuff there’s no way it’s all going to fit in his suitcases, so they have to put some of it in storage until his and Victoire’s lease starts in August.
TJ has already moved out, courtesy of his seven siblings and two mums, and Sirius, dressed in his brand new maroon T-shirt (“Proud Dad of a Harvard Grad”) is sitting on his empty bed, folding a truly monstrous pile of Teddy’s clean laundry which he suspects has been hastily done at the school laundromat the night before. Part of him is relieved he won’t have to meet TJ’s mums, especially Luci who is not his biggest fan—the last time he spoke to her was when she called him the day after that awful Thanksgiving to yell at him for keeping the divorce a secret from his son and upsetting him so much, and he’s kind of afraid of having to face her.
“Well, you didn’t kill each other yesterday,” Teddy forces some levity into his voice but Sirius knows he’s struggling—and has been—with the situation, perhaps more than he’s let his dads know. He knows Victoire was trying to get him to see the school counselor but he’s not sure if she was successful.
“No,” he says, “I think we can last a couple more days with no casualties.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re getting along.”
Something twists at the pit of Sirius’s stomach. He hopes Teddy isn’t filling his head with grand hopes of his parents reuniting after this weekend. They’ve hurt him enough in the past, and it’s taken a long time to patch up his broken trust and mend their frail relationship. It will be detrimental to all that healing if he somehow decides he can play matchmaker and ends up sorely disappointed when, after all this, Sirius and Remus still hate each other come Sunday evening. Still, this weekend is all about celebrating his achievements, so Sirius doesn’t want to say anything that might potentially ruin Teddy’s day. He just offers him a tight-lipped smile.
Packing ends up taking forever because Teddy—who has been a Resident Assistant for the past couple of years—has left his door open so that his fellow classmates and some lowerclassmen he’s made friends with can stop by and say goodbye. A seemingly endless stream of kids comes in for a hug, or to leave a keepsake, or to offer congratulations. A giggling cackle of freshmen girls spot Sirius sitting on the bed and immediately start blushing, exchanging quick glances with each other and blushing, and Teddy ends up politely kicking them out while the tips of his ears turn bright red.
Victoire pops in near lunchtime and brings them sandwiches, which they—to Sirius’s absolute horror—eat on the floor (“Come on, papa,” Teddy rolls his eyes, “you’re acting like you never went to college”). She shows off her freshly shaved side cut (“Your mum is going to kill you,” Teddy exclaims after giving her an appropriately chaste kiss in the presence of his father), and gives Sirius a big hug before she heads out, even though she’s only ever seen him through a phone screen.
“ Je te vois ce soir, ” she winks at him over her shoulder as she waltzes out the door with a pep in her step, always eager to speak French with a fellow native speaker since her boyfriend is so tragically bad at it, “ Au revoir, Monsieur Black. ”
"Oh come on, Vic," he grins, "I've told you already, just call me Sirius, it makes me feel old when you monsieur me."
"But you are old, dad," Teddy calls out from the floor.
“What’s tonight?” Sirius asks after she’s gone and Teddy at least has the decency to blush as he suddenly becomes a little too interested in scrubbing the glue residue off his desk from where he’s peeled a pride sticker off.
“Well,” he says, glancing away from his dad, “I know you probably don’t want to spend too much time in each other’s presence but—I kind of have news and I was hoping you and Da would come out to dinner with us so I could tell you…both, together, like, at the same table.”
“Theodore Fleamont Lupin,” Sirius full-names him, which fails to have its intended semi-threatening effect because he’s grinning, “you did not propose to that girl without telling me or your Da, did you?” Then, because that’s not the kind of parent his own parents were, he adds, “Because I’d still support you but my feelings would be incredibly hurt, just so you know.”
“Oh my god, dad,” Teddy rolls his eyes at him, “nothing like that, it’s—but I won’t spoil the surprise, not without Da.”
“You cruel child,” Sirius grins at him, “Now you know there’s no way in hell I’d say no to that dinner.”
“You should not have let me watch The Parent Trap obsessively on VHS, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Quit being such a smart arse and hand me your regalia so I can steam it.”
Teddy texts him the address—not without a snarky remark that if his parents got along we wouldn’t have to text it twice and could just send it to the family text chain. Sirius knows it’s meant to be a joke but it still hits him where it hurts. Not a day goes by without the guilt gnawing at his insides, and he hopes the damage they’ve done to their kid because they haven’t been able to sort out their issues isn’t irreparable.
Remus has gone out to meet up with Emmeline, a friend from his Oxford days who now teaches at Emmerson, and has told Teddy he’ll meet them at the restaurant. Since his Maps app indicates it’s not that long of a walk to the North End—barely forty minutes, and that’s not accounting for his speedy walking—he sets out on foot, because walking feels like a good distraction from the raging storm inside his head.
When he gets there, Teddy and Victoire are already seated at a table. Teddy takes her hand and presses a soft kiss to the back of her palm, then says something inaudible to Sirius that has her throwing her head back laughing. Something about the sight of them, the quiet, natural intimacy that exists between them, reminds him of him and Remus when they were younger and he has to pause mid step to collect himself.
“Sirius!” Victoire exclaims when she spots him and she jumps up from her seat to throw her arms around him and kiss his cheeks, “ Dieu merci, tu es là! Sauve-moi de ce discours insupportablement ennuyeux sur l'architecture. ”
“ Ne t'inquiète pas, je suis là pour te sauver, ” he grins at her.
“Enough with the French,” Teddy rolls his eyes jovially, then adds, “Hey, papa!”
Sirius, who grew up in France and still dreams in French sometimes, is more than happy to oblige his son’s girlfriend and chat with her in her native language, but also remembers how alienating it is to not be able to understand what others are saying, so he switches back to English as he’s taking his seat.
“You could have taken French in school, Theodore,” he parries, “but you chose to insult your dear old father and took German, so you’ve forfeited the right to complain.”
They wave off the waiter, asking for some more time until the last member of their party has arrived, and Victoire launches off into a story about her uncle Percy, who’s married to the famous Bulgarian football player, Viktor Krumov. She’s in the midst of showing Sirius photos of their newborn baby girl, Dara, when Remus approaches their table, cane clutched in his hand.
“Hi,” Sirius breathes out when he looks up at him and their eyes meet, then realizes he’s held Remus’s gaze for a little longer than he should have and quickly glances away, clearing his throat.
“Sorry I’m late,” Remus says, as Teddy hurries to assure him it’s no problem, really.
By force of habit, or so he tells himself, Sirius reaches out and pulls the chair out for Remus. The scrape of its legs against the floor startles Remus and Victoire out of their conversation and Sirius finds himself at the center of all three of his companions’ attention.
“I am starving,” he says, voice pitched unnaturally high, and he reaches for the menu so he can hide his flushed face behind it. To his surprise, Remus, once he’s comfortably sat, reaches to squeeze his arm in gratitude. It’s meant to be a casual gesture but he realizes it’s the first time in four years that they have touched. There’s a layer of clothing that separates their skin but the brief second in which Remus’s hand is on Sirius’s arm sends an electric current up his spine and he shudders, feeling more pathetic than ever.
“—my friend Chappell is lactose intolerant too,” Victoire is saying, “and she recommended this place, Teddy really wanted to find a restaurant where you’d have an actual choice and not just, like, a single vegan option that’s not even Italian.”
“Well,” Remus smiles at her, then at Teddy, “of course Teddy thought of everything.”
When they place their orders, it doesn’t escape Sirius’s notice that no one asks for an alcoholic beverage, and for the first time in a while, he feels grateful for their consideration rather than embarrassed by it. These past few days have almost been more of a struggle on his sobriety journey than when he first quit drinking.
“Ted, are you growing the blue hair out,” Remus asks and Victoire reaches to grab his arm appreciatively.
“Please,” she exclaims, “ Maman told him it was wildly inappropriate and now he’s got it in his head that he should get rid of it—”
“—and so Vic went ahead and shaved half her head off to detract her mom’s attention away from my blue hair,” Teddy grins, reaching out to stroke her hair.
“There’s nothing inappropriate about it,” Sirius shrugs, “I quite like it, but it’s your hair and it’s your choice at the end of the day.”
“ Tu vois? Exactement! ” Victoire says, stroking Teddy’s cheek.
“I have to agree with your dad,” Remus says, meeting Sirius’s eye with a soft smile that tugs at the corner of his lips, “I mean, Perkins&Will had no problem with it last summer—”
For a while, Sirius lets himself pretend that everything is back to normal: that he’s having dinner with his husband and their son, and their son’s girlfriend, and that the four years of pain and hatred and suffering they have inflicted upon each other and upon Teddy don’t linger between them. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt this happy and this much at ease, even if it’s just play-pretend; even if it’s just for tonight.
They talk a bit about Harry and George’s wedding—Vic and Teddy are the ones to blame, since Teddy took his cousin to visit Vic’s extended family over Christmas a few years back, literally and figuratively dropping Harry right into George’s lap—and about Victoire spending most of the summer with them before Teddy starts his first semester at grad school and she starts her job in August. Nobody mentions she’d have to take turns staying at Remus’s and Sirius’s houses. It’s like everyone is in on the unspoken rule that for tonight, just tonight, they’re a family again.
“So,” Remus says as they’re wrapping up with dessert, “How about your big news that’s the main reason for tonight’s celebration?”
Victoire positively beams at that, taking Teddy’s hand in her own and twining their fingers.
“Oh my God,” she rolls her eyes, “it’s been so hard to keep it a secret—I don’t even know why he wanted to in the first place, he’s so humble about it!”
The tips of Teddy’s ears turn red, and he takes a sip of his ice water before clearing his throat.
“Okay,” he says, “Well, um—you know I’m graduating and, well, I’ve been doing pretty well at school and stuff, which—you also know—”
He stumbles over his words in a way that’s so reminiscent of Remus when he was his age, shy and quiet, and modest, in all the ways he was back in his Oxford days, and Sirius’s heart wrenches. He takes Teddy’s other hand in his own and gives him a reassuring squeeze, rubbing his thumb gently against the back of his palm.
“Okay,” Teddy repeats, “well, I made valedictorian—I’ve been working on my speech, and I wanted to get Da’s input, you know, but then I thought—I thought it could be a surprise.”
“Oh, Teddy,” Sirius says, tears prickling at the back of his eyes and he has to clasp his hand over his mouth.
“What your dad means,” Remus supplies, “is we are so incredibly proud of you and we never doubted you.”
“And we love you so, so much,” Sirius adds once he’s regained sufficient control over his faculties.
For a split second, Remus hesitates before placing his own hand on top of Sirius and Teddy’s, and he offers Sirius another gentle, teary-eyed smile.
After they’ve sent Teddy and Victoire home, they stand awkwardly next to each other in front of the restaurant, contemplating what they should do next. They’re going to the same place, after all, so it would make sense to make the trip back together but Sirius isn’t sure that’s what Remus would want.
“We could share an Uber,” he says, more of a question than a suggestion really, half-mortified that Remus is going to shoot him down, “I really wouldn’t—I mean, it’s fine with me.”
“Actually, um—it’s nice out if you don’t mind walking with me?”
It’s an almost two-mile walk, and mild concern sparks up inside Sirius but he’s not going to tell Remus what he is or isn’t capable of doing; he knows the limitations of his own body and Sirius doesn’t get a say. He only nods and pulls up the directions on his phone, even though he already walked the distance once and is fairly certain he won’t get lost without the map.
They stroll down Salem Street through the North End in silence, noting the charming Italian cuisine establishments lining both sides of the road, the orange squares of light spilling out through the windows, the cheerful chatter of passers-by beelining out of restaurants. By force of habit, Sirius takes his usual place on Remus’s right side, making sure he’s the one closer to the curb. If Remus notices, he makes no mention of it. Sirius lets him set the pace and soon enough they’re in sync, the way they’ve always been. It makes him feel something , but he’s too stubborn to even begin delving into the what of it.
“This—well, it was nice. Dinner, I mean,” he says after a while, stumbling over his words like a teenager. He doesn’t know when he stopped being able to talk to Remus when it was once second nature to him. He doesn’t know why he cares.
“Yeah,” Remus glances over at him quickly, then adds, “We should do it more often when Teddy comes home this summer.”
If Remus had smacked him over the head with his cane, it would have hurt less. And really, Sirius wants to be the bigger person and let it go, especially after the nice evening they’ve had, but he’s held onto so much anger and he’s tried so hard to not let it show that he doesn’t have it in him to be the bigger person this time. Not when Remus is trying to pretend their split was amicable and they can be anything but hostile to each other under the circumstances.
“Wow,” he says, voice tainted with bitterness, “I’m surprised you think you can stomach that, considering how much you hate me.”
Remus lets out a heavy sigh. They pause at an intersection to wait for the lights and Sirius stares directly ahead of him, even as he can feel Remus’s stare on him.
“You know, Sirius, this whole bit is getting old.”
“What bit?” he asks through gritted teeth.
“This whole me hating you bit—I don’t hate you. I never did.”
If they weren’t crossing the street, Sirius would pause to stare at him. If he had grown a second head, it would have been more plausible than the words that have just left his mouth.
“Right,” he snickers, “You just don’t love me anymore, because I’m so fucking unlovable.”
Venom drips from his tongue as he speaks, thoughts that have weighed heavily on him for years, hounding him, howling like wolves at the confines of his mind, finally toppling out of his mouth now that he’s face to face with Remus. Now that they’ve opened the door for this conversation.
For a while, Remus stays silent, as if trying to find the right response. They walk past City Plaza, bathed in fluorescent light, the flags on the three impossibly tall flagpoles flapping furiously in the wind. Two Transit Police vehicles drive slowly past them, parking next to the glass entrance to a subway station.
“I never said that,” Remus sighs at last, “I—”
“Yeah,” Sirius cuts him off, “it was implied, Remus. I’m not the one who teaches English but I know how to interpret a sentence—”
They’re speaking in a hushed, urgent tone, almost a hiss, trying to keep their conversation private, but Sirius’s fury, bubbling quietly under his skin, is slowly threatening to take over. He’s imagined this conversation a thousand times over, how he’d finally confront Remus with the reality of what he’s done, with how completely and irrevocably he has ruined him, but not even once in his fantasies did the think Remus would deny hating him, when all his actions in the recent past point to it.
“Then you should know that not loving you and hating you are completely different things,” Remus says softly and his eyes meet Sirius’s. There isn’t a drop of rancor in that glance, just an unreadable expression. He looks away too quickly for Sirius to try and decipher it.
“Does it matter, Remus?” he swallows, and it feels like a net of barbed wire has wrapped around his throat, “I don’t think it does because you took your words and you strung together the one sentence most certain to completely destroy me, and you just…didn’t care.”
He pauses, forcing Remus to halt in his steps too, leaning on his cane. He adds, almost too quietly for Remus to hear with the cars whooshing past them, “You just walked out, moved on with your life.”
Remus blinks once, twice, and then something akin to anger flashes across his face. Finally , Sirius thinks. He’s had enough of playing nice. He’s had enough of Remus acting like there’s no love lost between them.
“Do you think my life has been easy?” Remus snaps, taking a step towards Sirius and cutting the distance between them to mere inches, close enough that Sirius can feel his breath on his face. “Do you think I wanted this? To be trapped in a body that doesn’t feel like mine, to be in pain all the time, to not be able to do my job the way I want to—I didn’t want any of this, Sirius, so don’t act like I left you and went off to frolic in the fields of joy.”
For a moment, all the fight is taken out of Sirius. Remus’s words lodge right beneath his ribcage and pry it open, its cracked and jagged edges ripping through the tough muscle of his heart.
“I would have been there for you if you’d told me,” he whispers, voicelessly, “I would have—”
“You would have what?” Remus snaps and starts walking away from him angrily so that Sirius has to chase after him. “From what I hear you were too busy hating me and wrecking your life because of it—”
As soon as he says it, Sirius can tell he regrets it. The two of them pause again, chests heaving, as they look at each other and, once again, can’t recognize the face looking back. Sirius’s fury may have been temporarily throttled but it’s back in full force now.
“Because of you!” He spits out, pointing an accusatory finger at Remus, and his voice rises at last, his control slipping, “Because you left me, you broke me, so you don’t get to judge me for what I had to do to pick up the pieces.”
Remus’s face softens and he swallows, the apple of his throat bobbing as he looks away from Sirius. In the pale moonlight, his features look rounded, the purple shadows beneath his eyes darker, more pronounced.
“Can we…can we not do this here?” he pleads with Sirius, “Out in the street? You’re making a scene—”
“I don’t give a fuck, Remus,” he spits out, seething. He’s not proud of what he’s done, of how low he sank in the years after Remus left, but if there is one person he will never allow to pass judgment on his coping mechanisms, it’s Remus. The fucking audacity, the fucking nerve of him.
“Let’s have it out here in the street,” he keeps going, carrying on with the momentum of his raging fury, “you don’t just get to come into my life and invite me to your bed, and act all nice to me and then turn around and get to be judge, jury, and executioner on all my past misgivings like you care about me—”
“ Like I care about you?” Remus lets out, incredulous, and his voice rises now, too, as he, again, shortens the distance between them. “Of course I care about you, you’re all I care about, damn you!”
All Sirius can do is stare in bewilderment. His breaths come out in quick succession, rattled.
“ Care about me? You left , Remus,” he whispers, voice hoarse with tears he’s holding back, “you wanted nothing to do with me, not me, YOU! How is that caring about me?”
“I was sick, and you had just gotten the approval, and I couldn’t do that to you, and do you have any idea how infuriating it is to see you wasting the freedom I gave you—”
Remus pauses, blinking, like he’s surprised even himself by saying what he did. Sirius finds it very hard to breathe, as if all the air has been knocked out of him.
“What are you talking about?” he barely manages.
“I wanted you to hate me,” the words keep spilling out of Remus now, and he’s shaking, his hand gripping the can has fully gone white, “I wanted you to move on, I gave you the excuse of absolutely despising me so you could learn how to live without me and instead you're acting like losing me is so goddamn hard—you had all that hatred to shield you and I've had nothing—”
“Remus… what do you mean?”
Sirius’s throat is so dry each word scrapes against flesh on its way out, leaving the metallic taste of blood on the tip of his tongue. He stares at his feet because he’s too afraid to meet Remus’s eyes.
“Letting you go—giving you up was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, I have to keep doing every day of my life—”
“What do you mean ‘letting me go’? ‘Giving me up’? What are you talking about?” his voice trembles, but he still stares at the ground, even as he can feel Remus’s eyes burning through him. He cannot handle meeting his gaze. He doesn’t know what he’s going to find there.
“I love you!” Remus shouts, then pauses, takes a breath. “I have never not loved you, you idiot! I got scared—I—you know how my father left when Ma got sick, I didn't—I couldn't do it, I couldn't do this to you, to us, I didn't want you to leave so I slammed the door on us instead—”
Sirius remains quiet for the longest time. He’s gone fully numb. He feels nothing but the throbbing, thrumming beat of his heart in his ears, the sudden rush of blood, and he knows that if Remus wasn’t standing in front of him, holding on tightly to his cane like his life depends on him, he would have hit him.
“You son of a bitch,” he spits out. “You fucking son of a bitch.”
He starts walking, as fast as he can, unseeing, wrapped in that same thick, impenetrable fog—Remus catches up to him, grasping his elbow and tugging, and he forces himself to stop.
“Sirius—”
He shakes his head. No. He doesn’t get to do this to him, he doesn’t get to walk back into his life and flip it upside down like this, he doesn’t get to—
“I wanted to die,” he admits softly, refusing to look at Remus; anywhere but at Remus, “I still do sometimes. The only reason I never did anything about it was Teddy. The reason I turned to drinking so I wouldn't—You leaving—it destroyed me, Remus.”
“Sirius—”
At last, he looks up and their eyes meet, brown on gray-blue, and that same unreadable expression is on Remus’s face again, and he wants to crack his pretty head open and peek into his brain and figure out what the hell he was thinking, why he would do this to him, why he would ever, ever believe this would hurt less than Sirius having to take care of him.
“That night I crashed my car—it—it wasn't on purpose, I swear to God,” he doesn’t know why he’s talking, but the words won’t stop coming out of him.
He’s never shared this before, with anyone, and he tries so hard to block these memories, to never relive these moments again, but here he is, at some random street corner in Boston, spilling his guts out to the one person he’s hate the most in his life, to the one person he loves more than anything.
“—but there’s a split second after you lose control of the car and it’s spinning off the road and time just slows down to a screech and in that split second I... you know, I was so hurt and so tired I just hoped that it would be fatal. It would be so... easy because I wouldn’t have to do anything and then, an accident wouldn’t hurt Teddy as much, so I just closed my eyes and hoped that my next breath would be my last, and—you’d think I’d be scared but all I felt was relief, because I could just let go. And then nothing happened. And I was disappointed. I lay in a ditch with my fucking car completely wrecked and I cried and I wanted to be dead, and you—”
His chest is heaving, his breathing rattled by sobs but the tears won’t come. He feels like he’s trapped in that car again, four thousand pounds of metal crushed around him, the world upside down through the windshield, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut, remind himself where he is, what is happening in his life.
“I'm sorry,” Remus breathes out and Sirius flutters his eyelids open to meet his gaze again, “I never wanted any of this, I'm so sorry—”
Hesitantly, hand shaking, Sirius reaches out and cups Remus’s cheek in his palm. His breath caresses Sirius’s skin, shaky and uneven.
“I'm sorry too,” he murmurs, and he realizes he means it, even if he doesn’t know quite what he’s apologizing for, “But you need to understand…you left me so your worst fears wouldn't come true but in doing so you made sure mine did.”
“Sirius—”
Remus’s face falls and he steps away from Sirius.
“I love you,” he admits, as his heart splinters, and he reaches out again, this time taking Remus’s hand in both of his, brushing his thumbs over the skin, reveling in the touch, craving it, knowing he can never have it, “but I can't forgive you. I don't know how to do that. I wish I did.”
They stay like that for a minute that stretches out like eternity, then Remus pulls his hand away from Sirius’s grip. His face is completely wiped of emotion.
“So what now?” he asks.
“We go back to the hotel,” Sirius shrugs, glancing away from him.
“You know damn well that’s not what I meant—”
“I’m sorry,” Sirius still doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, he’s not the one who has to apologize, not the one who broke them, “that’s all I can give you.”
The walk back to the hotel, into the elevator, and back to their room is silent, the silence laden with years’ worth of hurt they’re both holding back. Remus steps into the bathroom and slams the door shut. When he comes out, Sirius has turned out the lights and curled up in bed. He’s lying on his side, facing the wall, and doesn’t look at Remus once while he takes his meds and changes into his bedclothes.
He feels the mattress shift when Remus sits down on the bed, hears the shuffling of sheets as he gets under the covers, the sound of his breathing, the little hitch as he opens his mouth to say something, then changes his mind.
Sirius turns around, lying flat on his back and stares at the ceiling. He can feel Remus’s eyes on him but does nothing, says nothing, while he feels—everything. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries to calm his breathing, to no avail.
“Sirius—” Remus tries.
“Don’t,” he says, but his hand reaches for Remus’s.
Their fingers brush against each other, then they twine into a tight grip. The two of them lie, eyes locked on the ceiling, clinging onto the other’s hand well into the night.