Work Text:
Remus walked through their door, conscious of the fact that he couldn’t hear Sirius’s voice in their house. Remus had gotten used to hearing Sirius’s voice: sing, tinker with his bike, bicker with James, and verbally react to Doctor Who, a choice that Remus regrets forever. (He also regrets his thoughts every time he thinks of His and Sirius’s place as their place. He tells his thoughts to stop firmly, but it ignores him, as his thoughts usually do.)
The lack of Sirius’s voice was a problem in and of itself, but Remus relaxed slightly as he heard James’s voice from their lounge, and as he walked in properly he saw he was chatting to the fireplace, stomach-first and his feet kicked back. He watched fondly as James ran his hand through his hair like a peacock to the one and only Lily Evans- whose face was in the fireplace, squinting happily (but pretending not to be) up at her boyfriend.
Remus always laughed along with Sirius and Peter when James would tell them about his plan to Seduce Lily Potter, but he always knew that James was serious about her- well, as serious as one could be as an eleven-year-old proclaiming to the darkened room that he would definitely marry Lily Evans one day, angrily throwing a book at Sirius’s laughing form as he hissed angrily at them all to shut their gobs.
When James lept into their room in Year Six screaming that she had kissed his cheek goodnight, they all celebrated as young boys do- which was giving him wet willies as they all teased James about it as he puffed up his chest as if he were eighteen, not fifteen. At the time, Remus thought James should be proud of himself, as he couldn’t tell the boy he liked that was right next to him that he liked him, even though the boy he liked pretended to faint on top of James as he shrieked about how he would be his girl forever.
However, Sirius’s exaggerated proclamations were looking to be correct, as two years later they were still together, and as happy as they could be. Meanwhile, Remus was still pining over the same boy. He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn't hear Sirius’s voice at all, and as he stepped forward, James turned around and smiled at him.
“Hey Moons,” He said quite tiredly, and as Remus looked at him it looked as though he had been told some bad news, which wasn’t like James at all.
“Err- not that I don’t appreciate you at our- I mean, Sirius’s place,” Remus started, cursing his brain at saying that word out loud, “But, what’s going on?” He looked at James who glanced into the fireplace, and the strong voice of Lily piped up instead of James’.
“Maybe it’d be better if you went to find Sirius?” She asked, which in her tone of voice was more like a command than a suggestion. “He got some news and… well, it’d be better if he told you. James is just with me for my most excellent advice. I’m amazing, really.” She drawled, sounding an awful lot like Sirius, which made sense considering the amount of time Sirius and Lily spent together. Remus kept thinking about Sirius, which was normal for him, but made him more and more worried about Sirius, because he wasn’t downstairs, leaping for him like he normally did every time Remus came back from ‘work’. Sirius wasn’t downstairs, and James looked worried, and Lily was telling him in her Kind-Voice to go find him. He nodded like he was going into battle, and then went upstairs to where he knew he would find Sirius when he was sulking.
As he walked upstairs, he could just overhear Lily murmuring to James that “He’ll be alright Jamie, Remus will sort him out”, and then pushed that out of his mind and focused on going upstairs.
Their place was a simple two-story flat. It was really Sirius’s because it was his money, but whenever Remus brought it up to Sirius, (Which was normally when they were getting high- Remus always got loose lips when he got high with Sirius.) Sirius simply shrugged it off and said with his eyes that too closely resembled a pleading dog- “But it’s ours, Moonie.” And then laughed to himself as if it were a joke.
It wasn’t, really.
They lived on the second floor on the outskirts of London. They had Muggle neighbors and went to see Muggle friends and pubs, and learned to be as normal as they could be, with the whole Werewolf problem, Sirius’s need to be away from his parents, and also how they were Wizards learning how to grow up and live.
Every Friday, Remus and Sirius went to The Queen of the House, which was The Pub. It was a Muggle pub, that they had nicknamed ‘Minnie’, and they went there with James and Lily, Marlene and Dorcas, and Peter with whoever he was with at the time.
The flat was cosy, to say the least, and everything was quite small, but it didn’t stop Remus and Sirius from loving it with their whole hearts. Mostly everything was Muggle, except for the window overlooking the street in between Remus’s and Sirius’s rooms.
On the day they moved in, Sirius had accidentally broken the window. Remus still doesn’t know how he did it and doesn’t want to know, but as he ran upstairs to yell at him, his throat caught as he found that Sirius had charmed the different parts of the cracked window to be different colours, which reminded Remus of the glass stained windows in the church he grew up going to. And so as the colours stuck, Sirius liked to sit next to them when he was sulking or in a bad mood. He was there now, sitting with his feet hanging out the window, with Remus’s fag in his mouth. Remus knew Sirius knew he was there, and Sirius let out a breath of smoke as he sighed.
Remus got his own fag out, lit it, sat next to Sirius (they had put a cushioning charm on the windowsill), bent one knee, and leaned on it to look at Sirius. He was wearing a white shirt, which made him feel hot inside, and then he noticed that Sirius was wearing his pants and had rolled them up, which made him feel even hotter inside, and then he felt a bit shameful for wanting his best friend when something terrible had happened. Sirius was looking down at their street. (Remus really had got to stop referring to a street as their street, but he had been pining for years, he knew how it went.)
Sirius took a breath. “They officially disowned me, y’know?” Sirius breathed out.
“Baby,” Remus sighed out loud, immediately, and then instantly wished that he had never been born. Here Sirius was, officially(???) disowned, and Remus had called him ‘Baby.’ He didn’t know how to take it back, because he meant it, and so he just stared at Sirius. Sirius, who had turned to Remus with wide red-rimmed eyes and a sweet blush growing on his face, and then turned away so quickly it looked like he had whiplash, and then choked on his fag.
“Baby,” Remus said again, louder this time, and Remus saw that Sirius’s shoulders were turning red, and he was steadfastly looking away from him.
Remus was smirking a little, he had never really seen Sirius blush because of him, and he also didn’t know what else to say- he couldn’t really say “I love you” - probably not the best time. He couldn’t say “It’ll be alright.”, because it wasn’t alright, and he didn’t know what on earth Lily meant when she said that “Remus would sort him out”. He was doing a crap job, to be honest, but he couldn’t leave Sirius alone, that much was clear. He moved his leg so it was gently touching Sirius and then- only then did Sirius look at him properly.
It was clear that Sirius had been crying, and Remus thought not for the first time that he wanted to kill Walburga Black, and also thought (not for the first time) that Sirius looked rather beautiful, even with his reddened eyes.
“Fucking Christ Moony,” Sirius laughed wetly and wiped his eyes.
Remus's heart broke, a little.
Sirius stubbed out his fag, and shifted closer to Remus.
Remus smiled shyly, “Well, you know.” Because he knew that Sirius knew too. It was the unspoken thing between them, the thing that made Remus know everything about Sirius and vice versa. It was calling their place ‘their place’.
Sirius sniffed. “I do.” he fixed his eyes on Remus, whose face burned. “I do know, it’s just that- that- ”.
“I know you” Remus interrupted strongly. He glanced at Sirius whose expression had shifted, slightly. “I know you,” He continued. “And I know that you hate your family. And you know they’re your family. And families don’t really disown each other… or host eight-hour dinners… or have elf heads on the wall, but yours was always fucking weird.” He dared to look at Sirius, whose eyes had started to squint with happiness. “But they’re not your family. They haven’t been yours since you were eleven. And I think you always knew this was going to happen,” And was interrupted by a warm, slender hand on top of his, which was very distracting.
Remus flipped his hand over and intertwined their hands. Sirius had chipped black nail polish because of his bitten nails, and then Sirius decided to squeeze their hands, which just wasn’t okay at all. “You were saying?” Sirius grinned boyishly and raised his eyebrows at Remus who had embarrassingly, stopped talking.
He rolled his eyes, squeezed back, and continued. “-but you’ve created your own life away from them. You chose your own family, Sirius, and I- we- we’re never letting you go. I don’t want to let you go. And I'm sorry that your old family was bloody shit, but-” He was cut off again with another hand over his mouth, and looked back at Sirius, annoyed because he was going to get to his point, which would have probably been an I-Love-You-Let’s-Get-Married-And-Have-Children, so he was also a little grateful to him too.
Sirius was beaming at him. “Baby,” Sirius said, laughing good-naturedly, and oh that was not okay for Sirius to say at all. He could feel himself blushing and his eyes widening as he opened his mouth ready to say something back, but Sirius dropped his right hand and leaned his head sideways onto Remus’s neck, which killed any retort Remus had on his mind. Sirius squeezed their hands again and embarrassingly, Remus’s throat caught.
“You know I,” Remus began to say. “I, I just-” And he found that he was slightly choked up, so he stopped talking.
Sirius nodded into Remus’s neck. “I know” He whispered, as he looked out onto their street.
Remus nodded back. And looked out onto their street.