Chapter Text
They’re at James and Regulus’s apartment. After nearly a month of bleak, dreadful weather—constant rain that slicked the sidewalks and heavy wind that rattled the windows—the sun is finally out. Light spills in through the wide living room windows, pale and tentative, like it’s unsure whether it’s allowed to stay.
For anyone else, it would have been an invitation. To open the windows wide. To step outside. To reclaim something that had been lost to the gray.
Sirius barely notices.
He sinks deeper into the couch instead, shoulders curling inward as he tugs the blanket closer around himself. The fabric is soft, well-worn—Regulus’s, probably—and warm from where Sirius has been sitting for a while now. Dust floats lazily in the sunlight, catching in the air above the coffee table. Somewhere down the street, someone laughs. A car door slams. Life continues.
Sirius exhales, long and tired.
“I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
The words land heavier than he intends them to. He stares down at his hands, fiddling with the edge of the blanket, rubbing the fabric between his fingers until it starts to pill. He doesn’t look at James when he speaks. He’s afraid that if he does, he’ll see concern there—and something about that might break him open.
James doesn’t say anything. He sits across from Sirius, one leg folded beneath him, elbow resting on the arm of the chair. He watches Sirius attentively, like someone handling something fragile without wanting to show it.
“I’m starting to feel like everyone else already got the manual,” he says quietly. “Like they all know what love is supposed to look like, how it’s supposed to work. And I…” He trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I can’t seem to get it right.”
He presses his thumbnail into the skin beside his nail, harder than necessary. It stings. The pain is grounding.
James shifts slightly but stays quiet. He’s learned, over years of friendship, when Sirius needs words and when he needs space to reach them himself. This is one of those moments where interrupting would do more harm than good.
“It always goes the same way. It’s like a dream, almost. They’re great. Attentive. Thoughtful. Considerate. They remember things I forget I even mentioned.”
His mind flashes, unbidden, to a man standing in a kitchen that wasn’t his, handing him a mug of tea made exactly the way Sirius liked it—milk first, honey instead of sugar. You mentioned it once, the man had said, smiling proudly.
Sirius hadn’t remembered mentioning it at all.
“I start thinking, this is it,” Sirius admits. “That I finally found someone who sees me.”
He pauses, jaw tightening.
“But then something shifts.”
James leans forward slightly now, elbows resting on his knees, his attention sharpening. “How?”
He starts picking at his nails as his thoughts spiral downward. “Just… small things. They start predicting everything I do, or will do. Apologizing before I even get mad. It’s like they start loving me too carefully.”
He thinks of apologies offered too early. Of arguments that never happened because someone tried to preempt them. Of being watched too closely.
James frowns, the lines between his eyebrows deepening. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” Sirius nods, his fingers moving restlessly now, picking at his nails again. “And it makes me feel really ungrateful,” he admits. “Because what kind of person complains about being loved?” He laughs softly at that, a humorless sound. “But it gets overwhelming, suffocating. They act like I'm something fragile, like I'm already slipping away.”
“They stop being surprised by me,” he says quietly. “It’s like they’re already ten steps ahead, like they’ve lived this relationship before. Like they already know how it ends.”
James’s chest tightens painfully at that. He thinks of all the versions of Sirius he’s known—the reckless one, the guarded one, the one who loved too fast and the one who pretended not to care at all. The idea of someone loving Sirius as though he were predictable feels… wrong.
His thumbnail breaks the skin this time. A bead of red wells up, bright against his pale fingers. Sirius stares at it blankly, then wipes it against the blanket without thinking.
James notices. He always does. He resists the urge to reach across the space between them, to tell Sirius to stop hurting himself in small, quiet ways.
Sirius’s hand brushed against a book on the coffee table, half-buried under a magazine. The spine was worn, pages bent, and a faint smell of old paper lingered. Regulus had never been given this book for no reason — he remembered now. It had been a gift from someone Sirius had once loved, a person who’d insisted it would be perfect for his younger brother.
And suddenly, he was back in that tiny kitchen, a cup of tea warming his hands, someone smiling at him in a way that had seemed so perfect. They had remembered things he barely mentioned, anticipated his every mood. At first, it had felt like magic — but by the end, it had been suffocating, too measured, too predictable. That story had ended quietly, and yet the memory clung to him.
He set the book down gently and let his gaze drift to the sunlight spilling across James’s living room floor. Patterns. They kept repeating. And yet here he was again, hoping this time might feel different.
“I keep wondering if the problem is me,” he says. “If I’m just incapable of being satisfied. If I ruin things the moment they start feeling safe.”
James finally speaks, cautiously. “Sirius, wanting to be seen doesn’t make you ungrateful.”
Sirius doesn’t answer right away. He stares down at his hands again, at the way his fingers won’t stop moving.
“I just want someone who’s still figuring me out,” he says eventually. “Someone who lets me be… unfinished.” His mouth quirks into something almost like a smile. “Someone who surprises me. And lets me surprise them back.”
He leans his head against the back of the couch, eyes closing briefly.
“Not someone who loves me like they’ve already lived this,” he murmurs. “Like they already know what to do and what not to do.”
The room is quiet again. The sun keeps shining.
“Sometimes,” Sirius adds, almost to himself, “it feels like I’ve lived the same love story more than once.”
James doesn’t say it aloud, but the thought sits heavy in his chest: people don’t usually fall into the same story by accident.
☆
Remus blinks as he stirs his now-cold tea, having not taken a single sip– he was too busy thinking everything over. They’re in a small, but cozy café. In front of him is Lily, his most trusted confidant– and also the only person who knows about him. About what he can do. About what he’s doing, currently.
“Do you ever feel like you’re repeating your own mistakes on purpose?” he asks quietly.
Across the table, Lily tilts her head. “That sounds intentional, Remus.” she says, adding his name to soften her response.
He presses his thumb against the warm porcelain, grounding himself. He stares at the mug– involuntarily remembering another night, in another café.
Remus smiles as he gazes upon, dare he say it, the love of his life. It’s why he’s doing this, after all. Sirius is laughing as he’s actively recalling a story of him and James during their university days– something about how he had put blue hair-dye in James’s shampoo. Remus found himself listening more attentively than he ever had during lectures– for how could he not, when it’s a story coming from Sirius’s mouth? He could probably listen to Sirius talk for days.
“He wouldn’t speak to me for days after he found out. Days! I almost regretted it. But the look on his face? And the reactions from our friends? That made it totally worth it. I think he might still be mad, to this day.” Sirius chuckled.
“Really? I mean, it’s just hair-dye.” Remus questioned. He never knew anyone might get so upset about a different hair color– it’ll fade anyway. Besides, you can dye it right back, can’t you?
“Yeah,” Sirius grins, “it is, except James thinks of his hair as the second coming of Jesus or something. His hair is his most prized possession– it’s how I knew it would be the perfect prank.”
Remus shakes his head, trying to display disapproval, but failing miserably because of the soft smile on his face. “Can’t believe you’d be so inconsiderate of someone’s most prized possession, Sirius”
“What can I say, a prank is a prank.” Sirius winks. “What about you, Theo? Haven’t you ever pulled a prank?”
Remus huffs a humorless laugh as he pulls himself back to the present. “It isn’t. It just… feels inevitable.”
Lily’s brow furrows. “That’s not the same thing,” she says quietly. “You know that, right?”
“I keep telling myself I'll do it right this time,” he says, too busy with his thoughts to notice Lily’s comment. “That if I'm cautious enough, observant enough, I won't ruin it. That he’ll stay, and that everything will finally be okay.”
Then he adds, quietly. “That I’ll finally be enough for him, as I am.”
Lily exhales slowly. “Careful doesn’t usually make people stay,” Lily says gently. “It just makes them feel managed.” She scrunches up her face slightly– the words landing heavier than she intended. Remus flinches.
“I just—” He stops, swallowing. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
Lily studies him for a long moment. “Does he know you like this?”
Remus looks down. “Not really.”
Lily doesn’t ask what that means.
She stays quiet for a moment, watching him closely, creating space for Remus to respond. When it becomes clear he won’t, she speaks up again. “Is it working? This plan of yours?”
Remus thinks of laughter in a café. Of shared moments in a crowded room. Of a man who has completely taken over his mind, so much that this plan absolutely has to work. It has to.
Then his mind drifts to the inevitable goodbyes. Of all the times he wasn’t enough for him. Of all the heartbreaks he has had to endure. Of each and every time he has become a different person, for him. Always, and only, for him.
“No,” he admits. “Because being careful isn’t the same as being honest.”