Tell Me What You Want

October 30, 1980

I pounced on him when he came through the door. I kissed him swiftly on his lips, as I always did, and announced, "Guess what? Lily and James want us to come see Harry tonight!"

"Really?" he said, his eyes lighting up. "What time?"

"Whenever we get over there, they said they'll have their fireplace up all evening."

"Excellent," he said, and finally got his arms around me. I was jumping around him like an overgrown puppy, very unlike my usual, reserved self. He planted a firm kiss on my lips, which got me to hold still, though I was still wriggling. I loved going to see Harry - there was something about that baby--

"You're not even going to let me kiss you properly, are you?" he laughed, retrieving his briefcase from where he'd dropped it by the door. "All day at the Ministry I was thinking of you while I was talking to those wankers, and I come home and all you want to do is go see that baby. Remus," he pretended to scold, "what am I going to do with you?"

"Mm." I cocked one eyebrow suggestively. "I can think of a few things."

There - it was that look on his face that I loved so well, the one he was wearing now. The wide, quirky grin that spread across his face uncontrollably. I knew I was the only one who put that look on him - that look that said, 'I'm a total prat and I don't care, because I love you.'

He walked towards me, moving as if to take me into his arms and kiss me again, but I turned around coyly and leaned my back against his chest. He put his chin on my shoulder; I touched my nose to his. "You're wicked," he proclaimed, straining for my lips, but I turned my head, toying with him.

Revenge was his - he kissed my neck instead. Three kisses and one nip later and I was sighing, "Sirius..."

"A wicked tease..." Another kiss.

"Oh, look who's talking," I muttered, and I turned around and kissed him on his lips again. Satisfied, he let me go, and I followed him as he walked back to our bedroom. "What are you doing?"

"Changing my shirt." He swung open the closet door and began to look through. "If Harry's going to spit up again, I don't want it to be on this shirt." And he indicated the one he was wearing - one of his favorites. It was soft and elegant, with long sleeves, and the color of black that he claimed exactly matched his hair. I always replied that black wasn't hard to match, but it was a point lost on him. He took such pride in his appearance sometimes, but I could definitely understand why. He was drop-dead gorgeous, in my humble opinion.

Nothing struck his fancy, so he left the closet doors open and began to rummage through the second drawer of the dresser. While I studied the curve of his body, he pulled out an older, deep red t-shirt, and marched to the bathroom, unaware that I was watching him. He stood in front of the mirror and stripped off the beloved black shirt, then seemed to feel my gaze. He glanced over, winked, and asked, "See something you like?"

I'd watched him like this since we were teenagers in Gryffindor tower - I couldn't help it. I would have died if he'd known or acknowledged my adoration when we were young. As it was, I tried to fight the blush creeping into my cheeks, failed, and nodded, smiling. Oh, but he was handsome. He wasn't bulky, but he was thicker than I was, and he had a smooth, muscular curve about his arms, shoulders, and chest.

I, on the other hand, was still as skinny and scrawny as the day we'd met...and we'd been eleven then. But Sirius loved me, so everything was right with the world.

Sirius grinned again - quite wolfishly. How ironic. Then he pulled the shirt on over his head and reached for a comb to restore his hair to its perfect order. I always kept mine short, and he'd cut his to about my length to try it - but that had nearly killed him. His black locks were growing out again, nearly reaching his chin now, and they were the most prized part of his anatomy.

Meanwhile, I was still waiting rather impatiently outside the door. Usually I could wait for anything, I could keep my temper and my enthusiasm to perfectly pitched levels, but I simply adored Lily and James's baby. I knew Sirius did as well, certainly as much as I did, but there was something so...right about holding him. Sirius and I had both been the first people in to see him in the hospital room at St. Mungo's. We'd both held him in his first hour of life - Sirius first, as the godfather, and myself second.

And when I held him, it was like seeing life come full circle. My whole life had for so long revolved around pain and shame and a tight-fisted control of every aspect of it. James, Lily, and Peter, my best friends, had done much to ease that - Sirius, my lover, had done even more. But holding Harry - seeing such a perfect creation, born of two of my closest friends, and knowing what a beautiful life he had ahead of him, with Lily and James as parents and Sirius as godfather, somehow made me appreciate life in a new aspect. It reminded me, as had James and Lily and Peter's friendship and Sirius's tender love, that there were things that made life worth living.

"I like that smile," I heard Sirius say, and it was my turn to realize he'd been watching me. I must have been lost in my thoughts for a moment - thinking about the first time we'd held the baby. "What are you thinking about?"

"Harry," I answered truthfully.

Sirius tilted his head thoughtfully. "You really love him, don't you?"

Love - the name for protective urges and wild hopes. "Yes, I do."

Sirius blinked, then asked, very solemnly, "Remus? Do you want kids?"

I wasn't really surprised. We'd talked about kids before, but only in a very vague, unspecific manner. "Well...yes, maybe. One day. Certainly not now."

"No, I'm not joking. Do you want kids?"

Here was the boy who'd spent countless hours hexing Severus Snape's greasy hair and admiring his own reflection in the mirror while trying on his Quidditch robes - and he was suddenly grown into a man who cared for me in a way no one else ever had, who risked his life daily for the Order of the Phoenix, and who was now very seriously considering becoming a parent. It took my breath away.

"Yes," I answered, truthfully. "One day."

He had laid down the comb and came to me again, taking me in his arms. This was where I felt best, where I felt safest - Sirius's arms. He looked into my eyes and smiled softly. "Tell me what you want, Remus. Say the word and it's yours." He brushed his lips against mine, then whispered again, "Tell me what you want. You can have anything..."

I leaned my forehead against his, so our faces were touching lightly. "I want you, Sirius. I love you."

"I love you, Remus..."

And several kisses and several minutes later, we were in the fireplace, holding hands, on our way to see the Potters. Life was so beautiful, it made my heart ache.

~

October 30, 1981

I wanted to pounce on him when he came through the door. It was late, well into the night - I had ceased looking at my watch sometime beforehand, and now just sat in the dark in our living room, waiting for him to come through the door and explain where he'd been.

I had my suspicions. I wished he had been with another man, another woman, had been out drinking, I wished he'd been betraying me in any number of ways other than what I suspected.

But how was I to ask if he'd been at a meeting for the Death Eaters?

It was Peter who'd put the idea in my head, Peter who'd whispered to me one day that he'd heard a rumor about Sirius's true affiliations. Then he'd said nothing else about it. But I had traitorously begun to wonder about my lover, in much the same way that I worried he was wondering about me.

I knew that there would be people who suspected I was the traitor in the Order, the spy, simply because I was a Dark Creature. What a stupid name. As if I ever had any choice in what I was. I could no more have chosen to be bitten than I could have chosen the color of my hair or my eyes - it was all chance. It was all a mistake.

But Sirius - well, where did he go, these late nights, long after he could have been working? He didn't exactly keep office hours, but no one worked past midnight every night. Why didn't he talk to me anymore? We didn't talk, we didn't kiss, we didn't make love - every night we slept like strangers in our bed. And I stayed awake every night til he came in, lying in bed but never making a sound when he quietly unlocked the door to our flat and crept into our bedroom, when he stripped out of his clothes in the dark. But tonight, I couldn't pretend. I had to know.

Sure enough, there was the soft Unlocking Spell, the creak of the door, the hesitant footsteps. I stayed where I was in the chair, my arms folded across my chest in both a defensive and childishly protective manner. I watched the door where he came through, stepping by the kitchen and into the living room where I was. He stopped when he saw me.

"Where have you been?" I asked quietly, without any anger or concern in my voice. It was just a question. I might have been asking if he'd picked up the groceries on his way home, for all the emotion I displayed.

He didn't answer. He stood there, watching me from the shadows for a moment, then sighed and walked past me, into our bedroom. After a moment I rose and followed him.

"Well?" I prompted. He had already removed his pants, and was peeling off his shirt.

He still didn't answer. He just took off his clothes and pulled back the covers on his side of the bed. "Remus, I'm tired," he muttered, lying down on his stomach, his face buried in the pillow.

"That could be because it's 2:30 in the morning," I said sharply, then realized how much I sounded like the stereotypical jealous, betrayed lover. Perhaps because that's what I was.

"I'm sorry," he said, and though his voice was muffled I knew that he definitely was not sorry.

"Where have you been?" I asked, my voice a little firmer, and yet a little more desperate. He was silent. I sat down on the bed next to him, but remained upright, kept my arms crossed across my chest. I was still fully dressed. "Sirius, answer me."

He sighed wearily and turned his head so he was looking at the wall, away from me. "It sounds like you think you know where I was, Remus."

"Then why can't you say it?"

Silence.

"Answer me, Sirius." Silence. "Answer me!" I was begging. "Tell me you were with someone else, tell me you were working late, tell me you were drinking, say something! Say something!"

"Tell me what you want, Remus!" he exclaimed turning over and sitting up all in one swift motion. "Well? What do you want me to say?"

We looked at each other, our faces desperate in the dim light of the bedroom. And I found my gaze straying to his left forearm, looking for the Dark Mark, but it was too dark to see anything - and I looked up at his face, and he was looking for the Mark on my arm as well.

Then he realized I was looking at his face again, and he looked up and met my eyes. How had we come to this - not speaking, trying to search covertly for the Dark Mark on each other's arms? How had we come to this?

"Tell me what you want, Remus," he said again, weakly. And the distance between us on the bed seemed too wide to breach.

I could feel something inside me breaking - was it possible to actually feel one's heart breaking? Or was it my resolve? I wanted him to tell me that Peter's suspicious whispers had been a lie, a hoax; that Sirius was as loyal and as true as he had ever been; that these last months of silence and doubts had all been a bad dream.

But instead, I broke down in tears. I had not cried in years, but I broke down and said, "I want the old us back, Sirius. I want the way we used to be."

And I saw a glimmer on Sirius's face as well, and one of his hands timidly approached my shoulder. "Me too, Re. Me too."

And slowly, crying, we leaned into each other's arms. It was not tender like it used to be, it was not romantic, it was not sweet - it was faint and bitter and ugly, a final embrace in the end of a romance. The end.

We stayed like that for the rest of the night, just crying, just holding each other for what we knew was the last time. I would not wait up for him at nights any longer. He would not transform with me at the full moon. We knew this was the end of everything.

But I'd thought it was the end of everything between us, not everything in the entire world, as it actually proved to be. I don't know how it happened. But the next night was Halloween. The next night was the night Sirius murdered Lily and James and Peter.

I was denied custody of Harry by default - I was a Dark Creature, therefore I was not fit to have any child under my care. I lost the child, I lost my job when the Order of the Phoenix was dissolved after the loss of four of its members, I lost my three best friends when Sirius murdered them, I lost the only man I'd ever loved. I lost everything. Except those damned memories.

Truthfully, after all that, I wished Sirius had murdered me as well. I know he could have done it - could have done it that night, right there in our bed. He had me in his arms the whole time... I wished he had murdered me, or I had been sent to Azkaban where people have no thoughts, because it was the memories of all the good times that hurt me the worst. Isn't that ironic? - that the few things in my life that had made me want to live when I was younger, became the memories that made me want to die when I was older.

I hated those memories. I remembered a time when life had been so beautiful, and it made my heart ache.