Just the Way He Used To

There are no words to describe the stillness that he feels as he looks down into Remus' sleeping face, the silence all too apparent in the house around him. He never thought it would be like this, somehow, memories of heat and sticky flesh made impotent in an instant as he surveys the house, the room in which he stands and sees nothing to remind him of the boy that he once knew. Nothing to reconcile the image of this boy - this man, he amends silently, neither of them were boys even in those days he wants so badly to remember, those days of heat - tramping through jungles, tundra, deserts in search of peace as Albus has told him he once did. Such a wild, romantic image, that one, and he sees in his mind that slender hand wipe sweat off of a youthful brow.

Reconcile this with the smell of English herbs and black tea, the neatly kept garden outside and the sparse furniture inside that falls just shy of fussy. So sterile. This isn't you, he wants to tell the man who sleeps below his accusatory gaze. This isn't your house, your life, and finally begins to understand that the days that passed endlessly for him in Azkaban were years to everyone else. How old is Remus now? Not forty yet, is it possible? The rise and fall of breath, no more than a whisper, seems to only add to the stillness and there's a fresh gash on his cheek from the full moon the night before. Sirius can barely breathe, and doesn't want to; to wake this sleeping stranger might make this feeling permanent. He doesn't want to end this, his vigil. He knows this person who lies sleeping on the couch before him, remembers the way brown strands of hair, now dusted with silver, lay upon the cheek that angles just so. He remembers the smudges under Remus' eyelashes, now ringed with lines of worry, the way they look like ginger shadows. The fear that has seized his throat and stopped his breath says softly in his ear that those familiar things will change before his eyes with wakefulness, and no hint will be left of a Marauder in those golden eyes. Stay asleep, he silently implores his friend; stay the way you are.

Eyes open as if he had spoken aloud, with no moment of sleepy mutters or aimless stirrings. It used to unnerve Sirius, the odd feeling that he had woken up with a vampire, so quickly did Remus wake. How strange that Remus' expression doesn't change, not even to widen his eyes in surprise at his old friend's sudden appearance. He waits, patiently, for an explanation that will surely come as soon as Sirius has his breath back. He cannot speak. Instead he sits heavily on the coffee table, eliciting a flicker in Remus' eyes, hands groping for the compact healer's kit he knows to be there. Tenderly he wipes at the blood that oozes down Remus' cheek, his thumb stroking roughly at the skin beside the cut. His throat has seized. Without looking into his friend's face he applies the healing potion with the gentlest touch. Go and make tea, biscuits, a phone call, anything, his mind pleads. Anything but sit there and stare at me. What happened to Remus the Polite Host?

Finally he notices the nose twitch, just a little bit, enough to know that he is being smelled. He used to catch Remus at it all the time, when he wasn't looking. It isn't so much the scent that he looks for as the absence of scent, the way that nobody can ever smell their lover after a while, even though their invisible perfume still sends shivers down your spine. Sirius wishes suddenly for the erasure of twelve years of straw beds and caves and dog breath and despair. He is sure that he will be unrecognizable to Remus' senses, but then Remus' face relaxes into the hint of a smile. They don't speak yet, but finally he rises and moves into that bland kitchen to make that tea Sirius smells. He moves slowly and stiffly, carefully putting one foot in front of the other as if he were going to fall down at any moment. His eyes are still that vivid gold that was another memory that Sirius had filed away so many years ago. The only color he was able to remember when he escaped.

Remus returns to the couch eventually, two cups of tea floating along behind him. He sets a plate of cookies carefully beside Sirius, who is still sitting on the coffee table. Peanut butter, his favorite; those golden eyes tell him that Remus has been buying peanut butter cookies since he got the letter from Albus. Since he was told Sirius was coming to stay. There is a faint smile that almost curls his lips, gold eyes staring into his. Sirius had not even thought of the ways that the years have changed his own features; he is clean now, shaven and trimmed, but his face is older than Remus', and he has trouble remembering things. He had not forgotten that these cookies were his favorite, once upon a time, but before he put one into his mouth he had no idea how it would taste. How does Remus taste, after all these years?

The panic has subsided and they eat cookies and sip tea in comfortable silence. He thinks that Remus spends days without speaking, sitting still and curled inside himself, all alone but for a book. Sirius couldn't stand to stay quiet, always filling up the hours with his friends with happy nonsense that James was only too pleased to add to. He doesn't miss James, as he so often does, as he sits with his old friend. Eventually he shifts to the couch beside Remus, their hands brushing occasionally. Remus' skin is still cool from the night air. He stutters an apology, finally; he was delayed and wasn't with his friend on the final night of the full moon. In truth he was afraid that Moony, so much more honest than a human being could ever be, wouldn't take him back the way Remus would. Sirius is rewarded with a smile as Remus' eyes flutter closed and he leans closer, resting his head on Sirius' shoulder. He stares down at the top of his friend's skull, studying the silver hairs woven throughout that familiar brown, and suddenly recognizes that they are beautiful. Slowly, he reaches one hand up to stroke Remus' face, and racks his brains for the moments, once upon a time, that they had sat just like this. Memories ghost across his mind and he closes his eyes. It's the closest he's been to another human being since the night he fled from Hogwarts. He settles his nose into Remus' hair and breathes deeply, and thinks that he can still, faintly, smell the jungle and the boy he used to know. He feels Remus shake ever so slightly, laughing at the tickle or the echo of his own sniffing or just for the joy of the moment. He snuffles, like Padfoot, and feels Remus' laugh vibrate through his chest. They shift together, just a bit closer and then he is kissing Remus, who kisses back with a soft mouth and tastes just the way he used to, like chocolate. And he thinks, again, that there are no words for the stillness around them, and knows he wouldn't have it any other way.