CW: Self-Blame, references to: disordered eating patterns, disordered sleep patterns, past child abuse, the whomping willow incident, guilt. Ending where nothing is resolved. Mental illness.

Sirius misses the way Remus’s hands felt on his body. He misses the fervor of youth. He misses broom cupboard doors slamming against his back, misses fumbling hands yanking at his jeans, grabbing his hips like they would slip through those long, pale fingers.

There was fear there, but passion, the lingering thought that they could be caught at any moment. There was grief, too— those long months when Remus refused to take off his shirt, and, after the willow, the years it took to get used to the scars Sirius himself had caused.

They’d hurt each other.

Sirius hates that he still wakes up at night with his own insults ringing in his ears. His mind healer says it makes him a good person. A truly evil one wouldn’t care, she says. Sirius thinks, quietly, in the safety of his own mind, that a truly good one would never have said them. He feels it sometimes in arguments, flashfire instants where Wallaburga and Bellatrix pour out of his mouth like a stuck-open faucet, where he says things he doesn’t think, or says them unthinkingly.

He’s had a lot to unlearn, and he’s still finding new stones unturned, still growing into this adult body that was designed to expire at 23. So, yes. He misses their youth— a time when everything burned hot and cold, when he was too busy living in the moment to regret it, when danger came from so many places at once that a forgotten shower or skipped meal didn’t raise any notice.

Sirius missed when no one cared.

It was so much easier, then, to keep up with expectations. Sirius missed fighting and fucking and fleeing in the same afternoon, missed never having to answer for it. Now, though, he was in his thirties and still breathlessly panic-stricken and still, against all rational explanation, alive.

Now he had Remus in a way he could keep. They lived together, shared a bed and a set of dishes. Remus cooked, and Sirius ate, and no one was running. Sirius felt like a child, but he wanted so badly to be taken care of. Remus was there, doing the caring, doing everything Sirius had ever hoped for—

And yet, at the back of his mind, Sirius was still fleeing, fighting, flickering like a lighter on a windy day. He wasn’t sure he’d ever stop.

———