#;order

“But I didn’t. And I didn’t.” Regulus’ wand remained raised until the body struck the ground, unmoving. He cast his gaze over Sirius’ shoulder for any other signs of movement before lowering the arm, tipping his nose up towards his older sibling;

“You’d have been dead, anyways, if the curse had never been cast. 

“As is customary, your next words ought to be some form of gratitude.”

Sirius’ body was trembling from the shock of what had just happened. He had been so very close to death – not that he feared it – and it had caused his body to react. He ran his tongue over his lips and stared at his brother with wide, grey eyes. He didn’t move, not at first.

“Why.” He managed to sputter out as he kept his gaze focused on Regulus – whom, he had thought, had been fighting for the other side. “Why did you just save my life?”

“Wouldn’t kill ya to live a little, would it, Lucas?” Sirius asked with a bright smile. “Try to ignore all the shit just for five minutes to have a good time?”

“I’m not - I’m not doing this again with you. Can’t we keep it civil? For James’ sake?”

Such familiar strangers with a chasm between them, even laying side by side. For the past three days they’d been as two ships passing in the night. Remus sidestepped out of any close proximity, turning his head and never meeting his eyes for longer than a few seconds. When they spoke it was hardly better than the deafening silence; awkward small talk and half-hearted commentary. They were like ghosts, haunting a place they’d called home and going through the motions of what their life had been.

Two nights in the same bed, a hair’s breadth between them, and any passing touches a pantomime of the passion that had slipped through the cracks in their armor. He didn’t sleep much, plagued by nightmares when he did of the things he’d done and the things he would do before this war was over. Haunted while awake by this man he still, despite his best efforts, loved with all his heart. His lover who dabbled in Dark Arts and killed without thought to consequence and his friend who’d turned his back on everyone who’d taken him in and loved him.

He felt the bed shift and didn’t resist Sirius’ gentle pull. Remus rolled onto his back and stared up at him, his face framed by his short, dark locks hanging over his brow. Once they might have smiled, and kissed, running their hands over each other. Once Sirius would have cupped his face and told him he was beautiful Moons, so beautiful and caused all sorts of trouble. Now with barely a foot between them they simply stared at each other across the abyss of a million things unsaid.

Until Sirius said it.

He froze, those words a punch in the gut, his heart pounding so hard in his chest the artery in his neck visibly throbbed with his pulse. The rest of the world muted into a haze as he stared up in disbelief. That name in their bed was a desecration. And Remus…Remus..

“Where did you hear that?”

It wasn’t a denial. He never was a very good liar.

Sirius knew Remus better than he knew even himself – had spent so many years getting to know the intricacies of the person lying next to him in the bed they shared; his lover, the other half to his soul. He knew the second he saw Remus’ heart speed up, his pupils widening slightly – they were close enough for Sirius to see these minute changes in Remus and his heart felt like it had been ground into a fine powder and blown to the sea.

He swallowed hard, his face screwing up as if he were suffering physical pain, despite himself and his best efforts to keep a blank expression. It was too difficult. He’d hoped against hope that Peter had been mistaken, that it was someone else, some other werewolf who had gone to Hogwarts, but his lover – his former lover’s reaction told Sirius all he needed to know.

He wanted to recoil, to pull away, but the sheer shock of not being good enough to even best the man that had absolutely ruined Remus’ life kept him nailed to the spot, his hand still on Remus’ shoulder – desperately clutching at a tattered old t-shirt.

“I have a reliable source.” His voice cracked the same way his expression had and he knew he was close to one of two very different kinds of emotional outbursts. It was just a matter of time.

Sirius sat in the otherwise empty flat with a record playing on low volume. He had a cup of tea, that had gone cold, and one of the many dark arts books he had pilfered from 12 Grimmauld Place before he’d left. He was trying to learn how to defend himself, though many of the spells in the book left him with a sick feeling.

After having used the Unforgivable, and the reactions of his friends, Sirius had decided it’d be best to be equipped with hexes and curses that maimed and incapacitated rather than flat out killed.

His ears perked up to the sound of Remus’ key in the lock. Sirius always knew when it was Remus – he was there so infrequently that he could never quite get the door open without struggling with it for several minutes. Sirius leaned forward and took a sip of his disgusting tea, setting it back down on the coffee table as his erstwhile partner (current stranger/lover) made his way into the small sitting room.

He barely glanced over the top of his book, “Good to see you.”

“There’s a war, Sirius, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a fucking war out there!”

Tears mixed up with the blood falling from the cuts, a hand clutching her enlarged belly, and the other closed tightly against her wand, that pointed at nothing particullary. The tied up death eaters eyed her suspiciously– not everyday you saw a pregnant lady finding her way to help her friend in a fight that hadn’t been easy for them. Her arrival, either way, tilted the odds completely to their side.

“You can’t go out and put yourself at risk because you can’t sort your feelings out! You love him, you LOVE him! Instead of being suicidal, Sirius, tell him! Tell him because there might not be tomorrow for us, for ANY of us! Don’t die with regrets, don’t do this to yourself, to Remus!”

Her hand tentatively touched the wall for support, panting (after all, she had to run all the way to there when she realized she was the closest one that could help him— four against one didn’t seem fair at all).

“Hurry boy… it’s waiting there for you”

Sirius had been blown away by the tenacity of Lily Potter. When the Death Eaters sat, bound and no longer of any risk to them, he turned to her and pulled her into a hug. He could feel his godson press against him from inside her and he almost felt like crying. Almost.

Everything was too much, constantly… just too much. He shook his head as he looked at her, “Thank you.” He breathed, ignoring what she’d said to him – at least for the moment. He searched her eyes the pulled her into another embrace, this one lingering for quite a while longer as he rubbed her back and thought about the things she had said.

Disoriented, an indeterminable amount of time later, Remus stirred awake. He had a crick in his neck and his shoulder would not be thanking him for the stiff couch tomorrow. He yawned slowly and breathed in. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t wake up afraid. He woke up feeling safe.

What a distant memory, this feeling of warmth and waking beside someone he didn’t loathe. Without even opening his eyes he knew it was Sirius. Yes, he could smell him, nestled as he was within the crook of his neck, but it felt moreso like his body simply knew - this is Sirius, and we missed him.

He listened to the rise and fall of Sirius’ chest, the light exhale of his breath ruffling Remus’ matted curls. He laced his hand into the fabric of Sirius’ shirt, spreading his fingers until his hand rested over Sirius’ heart, feeling it beat beneath the calloused pads of his fingers.

“I don’t want to leave,” he whispered, believing still that Sirius slept. “I don’t ever want to leave.”

He would eventually, whenever Dumbledore returned. He had work to do, and he’d slink back to Greyback with his tail between his legs and a fitting excuse for his absence, but for now, he simply let himself be here, and wish things were different.

The slightest movement would’ve woken Sirius from a dead slumber, so it wasn’t a surprise that he peered his eyes open when Remus stirred. He kept quiet though, his breathing even and slow, his eyes only barely looking at brown curls and the movement of a hand in his shirt. He smiled at the touch, the words. This was a safe place, for now, but it couldn’t be such for long. They’d both have to leave, they’d both have to go back into the wild (literally, for poor Remus) and unknown. They’d both be risking more than just their lives in the middle of a war they were fighting for their friends. But they had now.

He lifted the arm that had been lazily draped over Remus to card it through messy hair and shifted slightly so that they might both be comfortable. “I don’t want you to leave.” He answered, voice thick from sleep. He couldn’t help himself now, wrapping the other arm around Remus to embrace him, to let him know he was still tethered to something real, to someone who cared about him despite all the ugliness he’d had to endure.