Work Text:
Sirius collects living things.
Butterflies from the garden, mice from the shed, fat black beetles crossing the stone walkway, lazy bumblebees floating through the tulips. He catches them gently, cupped in his palms. His long fingers no longer look like claws, and he is learning to be elegant again, graceful even when he's crouched in the garden following the progress of an industrious caterpillar.
He doesn't keep them, the things he collects. He watches them for a few minutes, an hour, an afternoon, then releases them, unharmed, into the overgrown garden they never get around to trimming.
Sirius rescues discarded herbs in terracotta pots from the bin behind the apothecary shop and nurtures them with water and sunlight until new green leaves unfurl. The kitchen windows are soon crowded with orphaned herbs, and the collection spreads into the dining room, the library, the bedroom, the bathroom.
Remus does not make jokes about living in a jungle of houseplants. He smiles and is not surprised that Sirius never forgets to water them.
One afternoon Remus comes home to find Sirius sitting on the kitchen floor, watching a line of ants march across the hardwood. The expression on his face is oddly solemn, and he does not even glance up when Remus sets the groceries on the counter.
For a long time, Remus watches Sirius watch the ants, saying nothing, thinking nothing except the same fervent, silent litany that has filled his mind in quiet moments for months: thank you, thank you, thank you.
Even when Sirius does look up, a faint smile curving his lips, Remus does not ask thinking of starting an ant farm? or why do they fascinate you so? or was it really so horrible that even ants are a marvel to you now?
He does not say please tell me what happened and he does not say you're still a mystery to me and he does not say you're different, you've changed, you're the same yet not the same. He wants to say those things, but the words catch in his throat.
Instead, he says, "Would you like some dinner?" and carefully steps over the ants on his way to the sink.
-
When Sirius awoke in St. Mungo's from a stillness that was neither sleep nor death, he did not say anything for a long time. He was annoyed by other people speaking, often waving his hands impatiently to hush them, scowling with frustration when the healers spoke to Remus or Harry over his head. But when the healers left and the hospital was quiet for the evening, he would sit back against the pillows and look at Remus with calm, storm-grey eyes, and it seemed that they didn't need to speak at all.
The first thing he said, four months after coming back and three weeks after waking up, was, "Remus. Listen."
Remus listened. He heard Sirius' voice, rough from disuse but so alive, so familiar, so real, still echoing in his startled mind. He heard a healer speaking down the hallway, a patient arguing in another room, a creaking wheelchair passing. He heard the muffled hum of the city outside, Muggle automobiles crowding the streets, rain pattering on the window. He heard Sirius' breath, slow and steady, and his own heartbeat. He felt the press of Sirius' hand in his own and almost believed that he could hear their blood racing through their veins.
Sirius smiled. "I think we should move to the ocean," he said.
Remus nodded and didn't ask why.
-
When they walk on the beach together, man and dog, Sirius chases birds and romps with children. He prances for young women and wiggles quite ridiculously when they scratch his ears. He barks at the waves and digs in the sand, helping a family of five laughing children demolish a lumpy sand castle. On a rickety old dock jutting into the cove, he spends a good fifteen minutes challenging a crab, stalking and pouncing but never harming the creature. When he finally gives up, he barks excitedly twice and tears away down the sand.
A woman with a toddler in tow laughs and says to Remus, "That's a lovely dog you have there."
Remus doesn't trust himself to answer. He feels a sweet tightening in his chest, an explosion he doesn't know how to control, so he merely grins foolishly and wanders away, following the shaggy black dog along the edge of the water.
Sirius plays through the afternoon, outlasting even the most energetic children, still racing through the waves while the families pack their cars and drive away. The sun sinks low in the sky, burnishing the ocean with a brilliant red hue. Remus sits on the sand, his arms draped casually over his knees, watching the dog trot back toward him.
Sirius shakes once, spraying Remus with droplets of seawater just for form's sake, then shifts back into a human and collapses, sprawling, on the sand. He rolls over to smile up at Remus, his limbs in an awkward jumble, his hair a mess, sand stuck to his skin, and Remus' breath catches.
For a moment he sees Sirius not as he is now, thin and gaunt and too pale for a summer beach, but as he was more than twenty years ago. Arrogant, elegant, beautiful, with the sun providing an implausible yet undeniably flattering backlight. Only Sirius could pull that off. Remus smiles and shakes his head.
"What?"
Small talk has returned, slowly. Sirius no longer weighs each word, no longer scolds others into silence. But the quiet, Remus thinks, has been good for them. It is a delight to discover just what can be said when they aren't saying anything at all.
He shakes his head again, then reaches out and brushes Sirius' hair back from his face. "You're still here," he says simply.
Sirius tilts his head to one side thoughtfully, then rolls over again and lies on his back, staring up at the deep purple sky. They sit in silence for several minutes, watching the sky grow darker and the first stars appear. The Dog Star winks brightly in the south, and a cool breeze rises from the ocean.
Sirius says, suddenly, "It was silent." Then he adds, "There."
Holding his breath for several heartbeats, Remus does not reply. He does not need to ask where there was.
"But not just -- not ordinary silent. Not just quiet. There was nothing. Nothing at all. It wasn't -- there never was anything. It was the sound of nothing ever having been alive." Sirius' hand scrapes across the sand and finds Remus', holds it tight. "You don't realise -- I never knew how much noise things made. Not doing anything, just by being alive. How warm they are, and how strange. There -- there everything is cold, and dark, and it never changes."
The ocean is dark now, and the breeze is nearly cold. Somewhere off the coast, the light of a fishing boat is bobbing on the waves. Remus grips Sirius' hand and tries to imagine a place in which there has never been life, a place with no warmth or sound or light. He shivers slightly.
He imagines Sirius lost in that place, mute, blind, cold, alone.
The shiver turns into an shudder, a breath-stealing ache that trembles through his body. He slides down to lie next to Sirius, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him close, pressing his face into the warmth of Sirius' neck.
"Remus?"
He kisses Sirius' jaw in response.
"I had fun today."
Remus waits, but that's all he says.
Smiling against Sirius' skin, Remus inhales slowly, then pulls away just far enough to say, "So did I."
"Good." The word is a sigh of relief, an intimate whisper, a half-smile.
"I don't think that crab did, though."
A sudden, joyous bark of laugher is caught by the breeze and carried away, dancing across the sand.