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It's all gone wrong again.
He can feel them starting to come away at the seams again.
They've always been prone to unravelling.
He's lost count of how many time they'd broken up at school.
James had said that they'd thrived on the drama, and perhaps that was true.
He'd certainly had more energy for it then.
He feels bone tired, and he knows that it's not helping.
The fucking moon doesn't help.
Or perhaps it finally does.
He can escape, fade away to nothing at let the wolf take over, only, he can't do that either.
Sirius had once told him that the only good potion was one that was brewed strong, and he isn't wrong, his version of Wolfsbane potion is disgustingly potent.
There's no way out.
Things had been different when they were away.
In many ways it had been like going back to the start.
The sun had shone down upon them, and he'd felt it, properly felt it, for the first time in years.
His freckles made a rare appearance, forming a speckled band across his crooked nose.
He'd felt almost healthy.
Less guilty.
No, he always feels guilty, because it's his fault, all of it.
In Sirius' room there's a photograph, it must have been taken during the Summer that they spent at Mary Macdonald's family farm.
The first time they'd broken up and ended up getting back together.
Marlene McKinnon's girlfriend, The Hufflepuff, the one he can't remember the name of, must have taken it, because she's not there, she's somewhere behind the camera.
He's shocked by how different he looks.
In the photograph he's forever a gangly fifteen year old, with his elbow resting against the top of Dorcus Meadows' afro.
The last time he'd seen Sirius, was a week or so before James and Lily had been murdered, before Azkaban, they'd gathered at the side of Dorcus' freshly dug grave.
All that time he'd thought of Sirius had been the traitor.
In the photograph Sirius has his arms wrapped around James.
He'd forgotten how beautiful Sirius had been.
How different he is now.
The hollow outline of a man slowly drinking himself to death.
In the very centre of the image was Peter, with one arm around Mary.
Peter had once made a joke about the reasons why someone might want to kill their girlfriend, and excluding Lily, they'd all laughed.
Mary is dead.
Just like Marlene, and Dorcus, and James, and Lily.
Suddenly the joke isn't very funny.
Why hadn't he seen it?
How could he have believed Peter over Sirius, over the man he loved?
Peter is worse than Voldermort.
At least with Voldermort it's not personal, it's ideological, he doesn't know them, he's not their friend.
They never should have come back to this place.
He should have found some way to talk sense into Dumbledore.
He should have tried.
Why is he so fucking inert?
Now they've been walled up alive in a house that he suspects actively wants them both dead.
They've stopped having sex.
They'd fallen back into bed with one another almost immediately, but now a chasm has opened up between them.
He can't bring himself to bridge it.
Sirius mostly keeps to his room.
He started sleeping one floor up, directly above Sirius, in Regulus' old room.
If it's possible there's something ever more depressing about Regulus' room than even Sirius'.
Maybe it's all the green, he's never much cared for that particular colour.
Maybe it's the fact that the room lacks any sense of individuality or personality.
It's just cut, copy and paste generic Slytherin.
He won't stay in this room without the lights on.
He lies on his back and stares up at the grim, dark ceiling that looms over him menacingly.
He's not sure if a ceiling can really be all that menacing, but this one is giving it a bloody good go.
He gets up.
He's used to being bone tired by now.
He pads across the floor, conscious that Sirius may very well be fast asleep beneath him, under him...one floor below.
He reaches for the sack he dumped in the corner and starts going through the possession of Sirius' brother.
He turns his attention to the chest of drawers thar sits under the window.
He finds a Slug Club badge.
He vaguely remembers seeing Regulus at Slug Club, he'd been one of the only Slytherins, along with Rory Mckinnon, who had ever bothered to turn up.
They never spoke.
He tosses the badge into the sack.
There are a handful of photograph, mostly Hogwarts, all Slytherin, that he doesn't throw away, he'll broach the subject with Sirius in the morning, if he wants all material traces of his brother destroyed.
There is a pile of letters tucked into the back of a drawer that look suspiciously like love letters, these he does throw away, for what need does anyone have for them now.
His fingers brush against something hard and smooth, and from one of the drawers he drags out an alabaster basin.
He turns the thing over in his hands.
It's so dark thar it's almost invisible, and yet he feels the weight of it in his hands.
The basin is a pensieve.
Not half as grand as the one in Dumbledore's office, but still attractive in its own stark way.
He sweeps clear the clutter on the top of the chest of drawers and places the basin in the centre.
He pulls his wand out of the pocket of his pyjamas and waves it over the basin, wondering as an after thought if interacting with a magical object trapped inside this house, is the best idea that he's ever had.
He's still getting used to his new wand.
Remus' actual wand is downstairs with Sirius, on account of them not being able to get his wand out of The Ministry.
He'd felt like an idiot standing in Ollivander's trying to explain how he'd come to lose/damage his wand, so badly that he'd needed a new one.
Ollivander had seemed decidedly unimpressed.
The wand in his hand feels alien and disconnected.
What doesn't help are the memories of the way Sirius used to treat his own wand.
Who holds their wand in their teeth, well, Sirius Black does.
Merlin only knows the sort of condition his wand will be in if he ever gets it back.
A silvery wisp appears in the centre of the basin, which blooms into a shimmering mirror.
He stares down at his reflection, and a worn out man blinks back at him.
Words bubble and form across the surface.
WANT A WAY TO CONNECT WITH WITCHES AND WIZARDS IN YOUR AREA?
Definitely fucking not.
Although, there is one wizard he'd like to reconnect with, possibly, maybe, yes.
LOCATING...
"NO, no, don't call Sirius!" Remus begs the pensieve.
CONTACTING SIRIUS BLACK...
His entire body blanches, as he frantically waves his wand over the basin to try and get the thing to stop.
It probably doesn't even work.
"Hello?" Sirius voice echoes up out of the liquid.
Sirius sounds different croaky and metallic.
"Is anyone there?"
He wonders how the pensieve has managed to make the connection, perhaps it's some sort of telepathy, it's strong magic.
He knows that he shouldn't reply, but Sirius sounds so different, that he can't help himself.
"Hello." He disguises his voice, by adding a higher pitch to his voice and leaning fully into the Welsh Valley thing.
"Whose that?" Sirius asks.
Remus mind goes completely blank.
He glances around Regulus' bedroom desperate for any inspiration.
The only the name that bonces around his skull is Thelonious, for some reason.
"Thelonious. I'm Thelonious," He cringes.
"Right, because you sort of sound a bit like,"
"Podmore." He concludes.
There's a pause.
And then Sirius asks.
"Are you any relation of Sturgis?"
The days have gone when Remus could pass off 50 something Sturgis Podmore as his Uncle, mores the pity.
"He's my cousin."
There's another pause.
Remus feels butterflies, actual butterflies, as if this is his first mission.
When in actual fact he's talking to the man that he's been in love with for well over twenty years.
The man who has literally had his cock inside him on so many different occasions he's lost count.
"Most people call me Phill." He adds trying to sound casual.
"Even though your name starts with a TH?"
He's forgotten that Sirius can spell.
"Phonics aren't a strong point in my friend group."
That sentence doesn't make sense.
"What's your name?" He asks, wondering if Sirius can do any better.
"Bob Smith." Comes the reply.
"Wow!" He exclaims with an accidentally chuckle.
"What?" He notes the defensive tone in Sirius' voice.
"We don't get many Bob Smith's in the Wizarding World."
"You are real aren't you, only sometimes I hear voices and sometimes,"
"I'm real." Remus replies without hesitation.
He can't stand to hear Sirius talk like that.
He knows he should, that it's probably important, but he can't bring himself to listen because he's a coward.
The thought of Sirius...
"Are you single, Phill?"
Wait, what!?
Is he single?
They haven't gone ahead and formally ended this yet, but, but...
"It's complicated."
He sits on the edge of Regulus' bed and listens to the sound of Sirius' sigh.
"Hummm, too complicated you don't want to fix it or,"
"I don't know how."
"Are they a bit emotionally unavailable, tight lipped, never say what they mean?"
He takes that personally.
He's always been a rubbish boyfriend.
"I think he can probably do better. I wonder what he ever saw in me."
"Have you got a job?" He can hear Sirius smile in his reply.
He thinks about this for a moment.
The longest role on his CV was as the DADA teacher at Hogwarts, and that had only been for a year, since then he's had nothing else.
"No."
"Are you rich?"
He has to laugh at this.
"Absolutely."
His face feels strange, so much lighter when he smiles.
"I could tell. It's either gold or a massive cock."
He snorts with laughter.
"Do you?"
He thinks he knows where this is going, and he decides to play along.
"Do I what?"
"Have a massive cock?"
He should probably feel jealous, but he's forgotten all about Bob Smith, he knows that he's talking to Sirius, and only Sirius.
He flops back onto the bed and rests one hand behind his head.
The ceiling looks a lot less loomy from this angle.
"Yes, it's so big I have to keep it in a separate building."
"Impressive. I suppose being so rich you don't have to worry about rent on said building." Sirius says.
"I sell tickets during the Summer, so the rent is taken care of that way."
He hears Sirius laugh again and it reminds him off the old days back in Gryffindor Tower when they'd close the curtains of his four poster and be lost in their own world.
"Maybe, I'll come."
That feels like low hanging fruit.
"Most people do."
That's probably the most forward he's ever been.
He's blushing.
He's thirty-six and he's blushing like a boy.
"Would you like to cum, Philip?" Sirius practically purs out each word.
The breath gets caught in his throat.
He clears his throat once, twice and then for a third time.
A flush runs the length of his body.
"Yes."
His hand slips under the band of his old striped pyjama trousers.
He'd had a pair of pyjamas almost exactly like these when they'd shared his bed as boys.
"It's Phill, not Phillip." Even now with his hand on his rapidly hardening cock, he can't stop himself from being pedantic.
"Whatever. Have you got your massive house cock out, yet?"
He giggles as if he was sixteen again.
In the back of his mind, he wonders if this is some sort of trick.
If this is something that Sirius will trap him with and use it against him at a later date.
They've both been guilty of that in the past.
"It's alright." Sirius says, as if reading his mind.
He exhales.
He frees his cock from its fabric confines.
The air in the room feels heavy.
He spits into the palm of his hand.
He thinks about the first time he saw Sirius' cock, how absolutely perfect it had been, just like the rest of him.
"Are you touching yourself?" From the breathy note he knows that Sirius is.
"Yes, Bob Smith, I am."
He is.
His hand is shaking as he gives his cock a tentative tug.
Everything feels suddenly heightened.
His fingers feel deliciously electric.
"Talk, talk to me." Sirius stutters.
He can tell from the sound of Sirius' voice, that he's not the only one indulging.
The idea of Sirius touching himself because of him does something to his head.
The beat of his heart begins to speed up.
"I wish you'd let me in." He says without thinking.
It's all he wants.
To be close to Sirius.
He closes his eyes and listens to the sound of Sirius' oh so familiar gasps, as he strokes himself.
Behind his eyelids he can picture Sirius' perfect face.
He will never change for Remus.
His mouth slightly open, and his brow creased, as he slowly comes undone.
More than anything he wishes he could touch Sirius.
Tangle his hands through his perfect hair.
Give it a playful tug.
He longs to feel his skin, to leave behind crescent shaped marks for his fingernails.
To smell the unique scent that is just Sirius.
"I love you."
He thinks he might have spoken, but it could easily have been Sirius.
He's not sure where one of them ends and the other begins.
He hears Sirius breathing become ragged.
"I want to kiss you." He exhales the words.
He presses the back of his head deep into the pillowcase behind his head.
"Remus!"
He hears Sirius cry out his name as he unravels.
He's so close to the edge, but despite this he fights the urge to finish himself off.
He stills his own movements.
With his eyes closed, he listens to the sound of Sirius' laboured breathing.
"I want to," He starts speaking, but stops in a bid to find the right words.
"I need to see you, please let me." He pleads.
"Yes."
Remus doesn't wait to hear anymore, or for Sirius to change his mind.
He opens his eyes with a smile.
"I'm coming."