Remus woke, laying on the mattress he and Sirius had bought and dragged back to their mysterious little house just off the beach. The waxing moonlight glowed through some curtains that he had conjured to cover the window, which was left open. The smell of the plants in the backyard wafted in through the window on a breeze that also carried with it notes of the tropical forest beyond and the salt of the sea and the dimmest sense of the smells of the city far off, riding on the night air.

Remus sat up, realizing Sirius wasn't in the bed beside him. "Sirius?" he called quietly. 

Getting up, Remus, dressed in his boxers, paused and tugged a plain white undershirt on over his head before slipping out of the bedroom, down the creaky hallway and into the mostly empty living room, where Sirius had used magic to make a table and chairs, and he'd even made Remus a bookshelf for the books he'd had packed away in his trunk when they'd left, which Remus had lined up on the shelves with a feeling of nostalgic home-ness that he hadn't felt since he'd left the flat in East London for the last time. 

"It isn't a Moony house unless it's got book shelves," Sirius had said when he'd made the shelf, and Remus had felt his heart beat through every nerve in his body, just like he had done in the old days when Sirius said things like that - things that proved how well he knew Remus, and how well he loved Remus. Remus could feel it even now as he ran his hands over the smooth wood and looked at the colorful spines of some of his most beloved titles - including an illustrated copy of J. R. R. Tolkien's books, given to him by James Potter for his birthday years and years ago...

Beside the book shelf was a squat table, too, and on the table was the record player and beside it sat the box of records that Remus had never had the heart to get rid of. The needle was pulled back and the player off, the turntable empty. 

In the far corner of the room, Buckbeak lay on a squat wood bed covered with straw that Sirius had made for him. His legs were crossed at the ankles and he had his head turned and tucked under his long wings, asleep. Remus watched the rise and fall of the hippogriff's chest.

But what Remus did not find in the living room was Sirius Black himself.

Sirius's leather jacket was missing from the back of the chair where he'd left it, Remus noticed, and the flip flops he'd left next to the door were also gone. 

Remus kicked on his own pair of flip flops - much larger in size than the ones Sirius wore - and he pushed opened the front door and walked down the wood steps, following the wood pathway they'd made that led out to the beach. Stepping through the protective charms, Remus spotted Sirius sitting on the sand and he stepped off the end of the pathway and walked across the warm beach toward Sirius, who was about halfway between the line of trees and the water line. 

Sirius was sitting in his boxers and leather jacket, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, staring up at the stars and hugging his knees. The flip flops were beside him on a blanket he'd laid down and his feet were buried in the sand, toes splayed so the sand got all in between them. Smoke streamed from his nostrils as Remus dropped down beside him and lay back on the blanket as though he had been there all along, legs stretched out before him, propped up on his elbows and watched the tide, the white-capped waves rolling gently in and out from the horizon line.

"I'm not over the novelty of going outside yet," Sirius admitted suddenly without prelude, lowering his cigarette between his index and middle fingers and shuffling his feet in the sand. He looked over at Remus and extended the cigarette as an offer. Remus shook his head. "I know you probably think I'm mad, sitting out here at this hour."

"No, I understand," Remus said. "I'm amazed you want to go inside at all."

"Well you vetoed the sex on the beach idea so I have to go inside sometimes," Sirius joked. He smirked at Remus, then turned back up to look at the sky again.

Remus closed his eyes. 

Sirius was staring at the moon when he asked, "How did you spend full moon nights?"

Remus opened his eyes. "I thought of you - during every one of them."

"You did?" Sirius asked.

Remus nodded. 

"I thought of you, too," Sirius said. He held up his arm, showing the old moon-cycle tattoo that circled his wrist like a bracelet. He paused, cradled his arm over the top of his knees and stared at the ink, at the little wolf, at the trees... "I always wondered if you were alright, if you were taking care of yourself, if you were staying safe and eating properly and staying warm." Sirius paused and turned to look at Remus, then, twisting in the sand so he was facing him. "I always wondered if you were warm enough."

Remus sighed, "I'm never warm enough."

"Are you cold right now?"

"It's a little chilly," Remus admitted.

Sirius shrugged off his leather jacket and lay it over Remus's shoulders. The jacket was warm with Sirius's heat and smell and Remus hugged it 'round him closely.

"You gave your old leather jacket to Tonks," Remus said.

"Yeah," Sirius said quietly. "She asked for it for her birthday. So I gave it to her. That was -- just a couple days before -- everything."

"I wondered at first where it was," Remus said, "I looked everywhere for it. I finally figured you must've left it at the house." 

They both know he meant the Potter's house in Godric's Hollow.

"Then one day, I saw Tonks wearing it. I knew it was yours the second I saw it, there was no doubt about it. And I asked her where she got it - she lied at first, she didn't think I'd let her keep it." Remus laughed, remembering the suspicion on Nymphadora Tonks's face when he'd asked her, the way she'd clutched the front of the jacket as though keeping it on, as though he'd tear it off her if he knew the truth." Remus sighed. "I wanted to... I wanted anything that might still hold your smell as deeply as that jacket did."

"I'm sorry, Moony," Sirius said. "I didn't know then that you'd need anything to - to remember me by."

"Would it have mattered if you did?" Remus asked. "The way we were by then?"

Sirius was quiet. "I don't know," he said finally.

The silence that hung between them then was long and heavy, both of them thinking about the way things had gone back in 1981. 

"I didn't think you were a traitor," Sirius said.

Remus laughed. "Of course you did. Everyone did. That was the point, wasn't it?"

"I knew you better than that, Remus," Sirius said solemnly.

Remus was quiet. He wanted more than anything to be able to say that he knew Sirius better than to have believed for even a moment that he'd been the traitor - but he had believed, hadn't he? He'd been talked into believing by Dumbledore and Moody and the myriad of others that thought that Sirius Black was the reason that the Potters had been murdered... Guilt rumbled in the deep parts of Remus.

"I wished I could've done more work like you were doing," Sirius murmured, and he took a deep inhale on his cigarette. He lay down then, too, right next to Remus, staring up into the dark that hung over them. "I wanted to be more involved, to be more active and fighting more directly. The funny thing was that nobody wanted to send me because they thought I was the obvious target, that You Know Who would go after me because he knew how close I was to the Potters. They thought I ought not to be involved because of how close I was. The same people who said I was too close said I was the betrayer." 

"Because you were the only one that knew everything, they said," Remus supplied. "Nobody knew that you and Wormtail had switched places. Nobody knew Peter knew more than you did. Not even me."

Sirius sighed. "Fuck Peter. Fuck Peter. I should've done it myself!" And suddenly there were tears in Sirius's eyes and the sky was blurry. "Gods, I should have done it my gods-damned self. I would be dead, of course, because he would have killed me. But I wouldn't have given up James and Lily and if any of us had to die it should've been --"

"Don't. Stop. Don't say it," Remus interrupted.

"It should've been me," Sirius said quickly, shaking his head. "I was as good as dead for twelve years, wasn't I? You were mourning me as though I was. I might as well have been. And if I was, then James and Lily would still be here, wouldn't they? At least Harry would have his parents, at least Harry wouldn't be alone all this --" Sirius's voice caught in his throat.

"I would be alone."

The words hung there and Remus felt his face flush. What a fucking selfish thing to say, he thought, what a selfish fucking thing.

But there it was, the truth.

The biggest fear Remus Lupin had ever had.

"I would be alone," he repeated. "And there'd be no hope of you coming back - however thin it may have seemed back then, there was still hope that you'd get out, that you'd find a way back to me somehow... I can't believe it happened, I can't believe you're here. I'm still pinching myself. Pinching myself like I did that night." A breathy laugh escaped him. "Remember how I pinched myself when you kissed me the first time?"

"I do," Sirius answered.

"I feel that same way every time I look at you now. Like you're not real, like I must be dreaming, hallucinating, that you musn't really be real, that I've lost my mind and gone mad from wanting and wishing and dreaming and -- but you're here, and the warmth in this leather jacket is real and you're --" Remus reached out and put a hand on Sirius's face. "You're here."

Sirius drew a deep breath and nodded. "I'm here."

"I'm selfish," Remus whispered, "I want you here more than I want --" his breath caught. He shook his head. He couldn't say the words he was feeling. It felt too dirty and horrible to say. It felt like some level of betrayal of his own, and he sat up, the leather jacket curving over him, and he covered his face. "Bloody hell, I'm awful. I'm awful."

"You're not awful," Sirius said, and he sat up, too, crawling up beside Remus, hugging him close and kissing the side of his head. "You're not awful."

"I am awful," Remus choked out the words. "I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else in the world - and there are loads of reasons why that is selfish, because if I had a time turner the only thing I'd change about this is that we would've run away before you went to Azkaban, we would've been here on this beach twelve years ago instead of now. I love you, and I would've trade you for - for anything. And it's that which makes me horrible." Remus looked into Sirius's grey eyes. "But I love you too much to take it back."