Wanting More

At first, Sirius is overjoyed to see the size of the suitcase Remus is holding. People only carry a big suitcase to a place they plan to stay. He carries it upstairs, into the room that was the 'guest room' while he was growing up, and is now his own because his old room makes the nightmares worse, the master bedroom is infested with ballmoths, Regulus' room smells of death and stale strangeness, and the other floor's rooms are already booked by the rest of the Order.

"We'll have to share," he says, and doesn't offer any more information. "I hope that's all right?" He is ashamed, knows that this is not what a Good Host does, but he will not abide Remus of all people (Remus who wanted lace curtains in their flat because he loved the light so, Remus who insisted on plants and life on every shelf), sleeping in those heavy rooms with the bloodish velvet drapes and black oak furniture and dead stonework snakes. He does not admit to himself that he needs to share, that he hates being alone.

"Of course it's all right," says Remus.

That night after the Weasleys have all gone to bed, they silently get undressed and into bed. Remus' back is to Sirius, and Sirius very nearly places an arm around Remus' waist and presses his chest to Remus' shoulder blades, but there is a bed and over a decade of lost time and betrayal between them, and so Sirius rolls over and clutches his hands to his breastbone, and lies awake for a very long time. In the morning, he cannot unbend his elbows all the way at first.

He turns to say good morning to Remus, but the other side of the bed is empty and cold, and he can hear Remus' tenor chatting with Molly Weasely in the kitchen to the accompaniment of frying-pan-clatter. Sirius gets dressed in the best clothes he has, a shirt and trousers that are the latest fashion from 1981. The shirt hangs from his shoulders as if it is still on a coat-hanger. He makes his way downstairs, and cannot decide if the creaking noise is the steps or his bones. He is too young for his bones to creak, he tells himself, and then has to count to see if that's true. He feels ancient and adrift in time.

All I know
Is everything is not as it's sold
but the more I grow the less I know
And I have lived so many lives
Though I'm not old
And the more I see, the less I grow
The fewer the seeds the more I sow

Sirius sits at the kitchen table, fist firmly around a bottle supplied grudgingly by Mundungus Fletcher, eyes firmly on the door. His free hand taps a frenetic tattoo on the wood of the table, next to the congealing soup that Molly Weasley admonished him to eat before his glare sent her sweeping from the room, muttering something about ingrates and the Professor deserving better. He'd have followed her, save that he knows she is right, and that Remus deserves better than the man he has become. He realises that there is a thread hanging from the dingy cuff of his shirt, and brings it up to his mouth, ripping at it with his teeth like a dog. Then he realises he is human, and is ashamed. He rises to put the bottle away, but the door opens before he can reach the cupboard, and Remus is standing there, grey-faced and weary. Remus's lips quirk in a smile when he sees Sirius, but drop in the corners when he sees the bottle.

"Oh, Sirius."

"I - I was just putting it away, Remus. Really. I'm sorry."

"I know, Sirius. You always are."

Sirius takes a step towards Remus, hands twitching in an abortive attempt by his arms to come up and close around the other man, and stops several feet away. He does not want to stop, but it is as if there is a point he cannot cross without being singed. Remus crosses it instead, and remains miraculously unsinged as he embraces Sirius like a child, wrists bumping uncomfortably against shoulders that are still too thin despite all of Molly Weasley's best efforts. Sirius cannot move, cannot make a sound, and Remus clasps him tightly.

Then I see you standing there
Wanting more from me
And all I can do is try
Then I see you standing there
Wanting more from me
And all I can do is try

Remus goes away again, always, leaving Sirius alone in the house full of ghosts and sometimes Molly Weasley, who tuts and dusts and leaves casseroles and fades away like a cat in a Muggle book, leaving unbearable pity instead of a smile. She makes Sirius want to throw things, but he doesn't, because he has no wand to mend broken plates with. Remus leaves, and Molly leaves, and the ghosts stay, real because he can touch them and feel them, real because he knows them inside and out, real because they look at him with disgust and loathing, and disgust and loathing are real where pity is not. He takes comfort in the familiarity of their disdain, and does not light the fire, because when his fingers sting from the cold he is reminded that he is alive and can feel. The voice in his head hisses that it is colder outside, so much colder, and that he must stay inside where the relative warmth is numbing.

Remus comes back and finds him in the bottle again, unwashed, and Remus of the infinite patience has no patience any longer. There is shouting, and this time Sirius really does throw something, and the bottle smashes satisfyingly on the stone floor, and Sirius is not sure how it happens but Remus is whispering "I love you".

Sirius snarls "Do you?", and is almost happy at the look of hurt on Remus' face. "Do you? Do you love this, this wanted criminal, this drunk, this man who cannot even go into half of HIS OWN HOUSE without cringing? You love Sirius Black, Remus. You love Padfoot. You love the man who died thirteen long damned years ago, the man who bought his godson a tiny broom, who got oil all over his hands bringing a monster of a motorcycle to life, the man who wasn't afraid to go outside and afraid to stay inside and didn't jump at shadows!"

"Sirius - "

"Is this what you wanted, all those years ago? We were going to buy that house in Dorset that you fell in love with, near Hengisbury Head, with those massive hydrangea in the garden. We were going to have a budgie. I was going to name him Eric! I remember, Remus. Look!" Sirius waves his hand wildly around, indicating the dampness, the darkness. "This is a townhouse in London, infested with who-knows-what, with house-elf heads mounted on the walls! It's dead, Remus." He does not say like me, like us. He does not have to.

I wish I hadn't seen all of the realness
And all the real people are really not real at all
The more I learn the more I cry
As I say goodbye to the way of life
I thought I had designed for me

Remus sleeps in the guest room, still, when Remus is in the house. Sirius has taken to sleeping where he falls asleep, usually in one of the wooden kitchen chairs. One night, Remus finds him as Padfoot, curled up in ball in the corner of the kitchen, and touches him. Padfoot becomes Sirius in an instant, huddled against the wall, with eyes that look beyond Remus for a tall dark shape come to take his soul away. Remus worries, and wonders, and does not recognise Sirius in the beast anymore, though he wants to.

One day, he goes to Sirius, and makes sure Sirius knows he is there before touching him.

"I've been thinking. You were right, you know. I don't recognise that Sirius in you. But when I think about how I was then, I don't much see that Remus in me, either. I won't say we were innocent, because we weren't, none of us were. We knew damn well the other shoe was starting to look pretty precarious. I don't think either of us ever was innocent. But we weren't bitter. Now look at me. My hair's more grey than brown. I'm a tired old man. I spent twelve years with my best friends all dead, Sirius, and I know you were alive all that time but you might as well have not been for all the good it did me, because I knew you were worse than dead. And you've changed, and I've changed, and we've changed. I don't know you anymore, Sirius. But I'd like to."

Sirius looks at him, and doesn't want to hope. "This is all there is, Moony. There's no potential left in me. All I am is memories."

"It's all right, Padfoot. It's enough. We can make it enough."

"You're not old, Moony."

Then I see you standing there
Wanting more from me
And all I can do is try Then I see you standing there
I'm all I'll ever be
But all I can do is try
Try

Christmas happens, and with it come a horde of worried Weasleys, and Harry, and Sirius is as alive as he ever is, though he feels slightly guilty over taking any pleasure from Arthur Weasley's injury. He bounds from person to person, bright and warm and vital, and laughs, and drinks in the realness. Remus watches, and reins him in when it is necessary, because Sirius forgets sometimes what the limits are with real people. Sirius finds himself watching Harry a lot, and one night he and Remus stay up late and Sirius gets maudlin and starts talking to James, so proud, he would be so proud, and Molly Weasley finds them both asleep next to each other in the kitchen the next morning, faces stained with the white of dried tears.

After Christmas, when the house is empty again save for the two of them and occasionally Molly Weasley and a meeting, Remus comes home one day carrying a large object covered in a blanket, with a Warming Spell around it. He removes the blanket, and inside the blanket there is a cage, and inside the cage there hops a feathery smudge of colour. Sirius is transfixed. He extends a hand as if to touch the soft breast, and draws it back fearfully. Remus opens a door on the cage, and the budgie flits to the edge of the hole and perches there, bright eyes arrogantly taking stock of its new domain.

"Oh," says Sirius. Remus takes Sirius' hand, which is hovering paralysed in midair, and presses his index finger gently across the bird's belly. The bird steps onto the finger and runs up Sirius' arm to sit on his shoulder, chirping softly and ruffling its feathers. Sirius sits very still.

"It's all right, Sirius. Eric won't break if you move."

"His name is Eric?"

"Eric."

"Oh," says Sirius again, and stands up. Slowly, like a rusty hinge, his hands come up and tangle themselves in Remus' hair, and Sirius moves forward until his nose is almost touching Remus's. He keeps his eyes open, afraid that if he blinks then he will wake up. Eric, discomfited, takes off to fly around the room in an aerial survey. Sirius's lips make contact with Remus' mouth, awkwardly, and then he pulls away again. "D'you think the front garden gets enough light for hydrangea?"

All of the moments that already passed
We'll try to go back and make them last
All of the things we want each other to be
We never will be
And that's wonderful, and that's life
And that's you, baby
This is me, baby
And we are, we are, we are, we are
Free In our love
We are free in our love