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Grimmauld Place has dark corners and thick shadows, rends in the carpet and dirt patterned on the walls like paint, every niche and alcove seething with memories, things Sirius can't remember, wishes he could forget. His mother is still alive, still breathing and screaming from her tarnished shrine at the end of the hall, and he sees his brother in the curl of the drapes, the fragile clouds of dust streaming in the doorways, hears his voice in the soft creak of the stairs, the gusts of wind shrieking against the windows. He cannot get warm, feels ice shifting in the centre of his bones, shivering in the slow, humid stretch of London's midsummer, emptied by a house brimming with red hair and laughter and noise.
He misses Harry like sunshine and a full night's sleep, a ragged hollow yawning in the pit of his gut, carved out to fit a boy he barely knows, a boy he nearly forgot in Azkaban, the only thing he managed to hide from the dementors, his last solid and willing link to James' ghost. Remus is tired and grey, worn thin around the edges and quietly unfamiliar, a stranger scarred by his own monsters, hunched under the weight of his own life; he embraced Sirius easily the night Peter should've died, but their silences are thunderous now, built from wreckage and graveyards, cluttered by secrets and distance and time. Past wrongs wait between them like a wall, tall and sharp and rougher than stone, and Sirius doesn't know how to scale it, doesn't think Remus cares enough to try.
They sit up late every few nights, sneaking into the drawing room after the others have gone to bed, blankets pulled over their laps and Firewhisky buried in their tea, shadows pushing toward their feet as they watch the fire snap and pop without words, long fingers of flame that lick at the bricks, shockingly bright and out of place in his mother's hearth. Remus recounts their school days sometimes, when the walls have finally stopped murmuring, when he has drunk enough to forgive himself, to forget the guilt they both carry in their pockets, wear on the ends of their sleeves, but Sirius can't shape the stories into a picture he understands, the details slipping between his fingers like sand, shrouded like the sun behind a cloud.
"You must give it time," Dumbledore says, on a listless afternoon in July, his eyes hooded behind his half-moon spectacles, a slow frown twisting the line of his beard. "The mind has a great capacity to heal, but such things do not happen overnight."
Sirius has plenty of time, long minutes and longer hours, one day seeping into the next, bleeding slowly into weeks he doesn't bother to count, the sun rising and the sky bruising in places he never sees, isn't allowed to go. He wanders the house like a ghost, avoiding the cautious whispers and narrow looks that follow him from room to room, stewing in anger whenever Remus is away, as resentful of his absence as he is of his presence, loss burning at the back of his throat, aching sharply underneath his ribs. He leaves books unread, chess games unfinished, spends blurry, undefined stretches shifted into Padfoot, digging at the rubbish Kreacher has stashed under the water tank, barking when Molly complains about dog hair on the furniture, paw prints on the kitchen floor.
"Come on, let's go upstairs," Remus says, one night in early August, when Sirius is completely lost, half drunk and wholly furious, shouting at nothing, the shadows in the drawing room, all the memories he can't quite place. Sirius is shaking, a rough tremor he can feel in his teeth, at the base of his skull, his eyes wide and his chest tight and his wand aimed at a harmless crack in the wall, but the careful sweep of Remus' voice uncoils something deep in his spine, enough that he lets himself be led away, leaning into the weary hand cradling the point of his elbow, the soft puffs of breath at the back of his neck.
Remus herds him into bed with gentle words and a few easy touches, his hand on Sirius' shoulder, his fingers in Sirius' hair, crawls in after him like a scene from a previous life, from their last two years at school, laughing in broom cupboards and dusty, hidden corners, from the tiny flat they shared in the frenetic reach of time that followed, two dingy rooms on the fringes of Muggle London, no heat and barely any water, a single mattress and never enough food. Sirius thinks they might've been happy then, before the Order started to dwindle and die, before the war truly dug it claws into everybody's throats, shaping an exhausted, desperate life in the cracks between meetings and missions and Death Eaters, until fear and suspicion drove a wedge into their honesty, split them into two separate halves that rubbed each other raw.
He is relieved when Remus kisses him, almost grateful, his heart quiet and full, on familiar ground for the first time since he swam the North Sea. It's one of the rare things he does remember, the taste of Remus' mouth and the smooth slide of Remus' skin, the heavy thrum of Remus' pulse, the rough and needy noises Remus used to make, his hands pulling at Sirius' clothes, his tongue soft and slick against the line of Sirius' neck, the curve of Sirius' jaw; they fit together differently now, their bodies older and thinner, formed from foreign angles and mottled with new scars, white lines on Remus' sides and dark ink on Sirius' chest, but they fumble into a rhythm, desperate and gasping, slower than the ageless people from Sirius' memories, the effortless way the fucked at eighteen and nineteen and twenty, even the furtive, distant way they fucked at twenty-one, aching and resigned, the only common language they still spoke in the restless months before James and Lily died.
Sirius comes easily, his hands knotted in Remus' hair, his mouth pressed to the hollow of Remus' throat, heat filling up the holes in his thoughts, the splinters in his bones, his body limp and humming, warm for the first time in weeks. Satisfied. He watches Remus' face as he curls his hand around Remus' cock, the narrow set of his eyes, the tight pull of his mouth; in the spill of the shadows he briefly looks sixteen again, the boy who loved Sirius like a fairy tale, who forgave Sirius for giving Snape his secrets, who convinced Lily that James wasn't quite as bad as he seemed, and Sirius lets himself believe it as long as it takes for Remus to shudder and murmur his name.
"It can't be like this," Remus says, later, his voice careful and taut, thinner than cobwebs as he frowns at the ceiling. "I got over you. I had to, if I wanted to keep living."
The silence chafes at Sirius' skin, itches at something under his fingernails, at the back of his knees, but he doesn't try to break it, keeps his words hidden on the well of his lip as he listens to Remus breathe, to the low mutter rustling behind the walls. It will happen again, the next time Sirius is morose or angry or stupidly drunk, the next time he punches his fist through the wall, shatters one of the dusty family relics, because Remus is a liar, the kind of liar who can convince himself he's telling the truth, and his need to keep the peace is stronger than his nerve, bigger than all the ugly, squirming things they left at Godrics Hollow.
Sirius should let it go now, while they're both still able to walk away, but Sirius has never been a good person, and he's tired of being dead.