He Comforted Me After My Breakdown, So I Pinned Him To The Wall And Claimed The Man I've Wanted For A Decade

The long, skeletal fingers of the Black family portraits seemed to press in on him, their painted eyes following every shift of his weight in the uncomfortable chair. Sirius hated these meetings. Hated the stale air of the dining room, the oppressive gloom of the house, and the constant, grating presence of Severus Snape. But most of all, he hated watching Remus fade.

His eyes were fixed on him now, tracing the lines of exhaustion carved around his mouth and eyes. Remus sat opposite him, hunched slightly over the table as if the weight of his own bones was too much to bear. His amber eyes, usually so warm and intelligent, were clouded with a deep, weary pain. His jumper, worn thin at the elbows, couldn't hide how much weight he'd lost. He was all sharp angles and hollows, a ghost of the man he’d been. A fresh scar, still pink and angry, sliced from his temple down to his jaw, disappearing into the collar of his shirt. It was new since the last time he’d been back from his mission among Greyback’s pack. Sirius’s hands clenched into fists under the table, his knuckles white. Every new mark on Remus’s skin felt like a personal failure, a fresh brand of guilt seared into his own soul.

He wanted to cross the room, drag Remus from that chair, and lock him away in a room upstairs where nothing and no one could touch him again. The urge was a physical thing, a hot, possessive coil tightening in his gut. It was an old, familiar feeling, one he’d been wrestling with since they were boys.

Dumbledore was speaking, his voice a low drone, but Sirius couldn’t focus on the words. All his attention was snagged on the way Remus rubbed a hand over his face, his fingers trembling slightly.

"And what of Lupin's sources?" Snape's voice cut through the room, oily and sharp. "Can we truly be certain of their loyalties? He spends a great deal of time with these… creatures. One might begin to wonder where his own sympathies lie."

Something inside Sirius snapped. The low-simmering rage he lived with daily erupted into a white-hot inferno. He was on his feet before he even registered the decision to move, the legs of his chair scraping violently against the floor.

"You shut your greasy mouth, Snape," Sirius snarled, his voice dangerously low. Every eye in the room turned to him. "You haven't got the first clue what he's sacrificing. While you're brewing your potions and playing spy, he's living in the filth you wouldn't dare step in. Don't you ever," he took a step forward, his hand reaching for the wand in his pocket, "question his loyalty in this house again."

The room was silent, thick with shock. He could feel Moody's magical eye trained on him, could see Molly Weasley's lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. But he didn't care. He looked at Remus, whose own eyes were wide, a flicker of something unreadable—shock, maybe something more—in their tired depths. The sight of it only stoked the fire in Sirius’s chest. He would burn the world down to keep that look off Remus’s face.

The meeting broke apart under Dumbledore’s placating tones, but the tension lingered, clinging to the grimy wallpaper like a second skin. Sirius stalked from the room without another word, the rage still a hot, metallic taste in his mouth. He spent the next few hours pacing his bedroom, the image of Remus’s wide, startled eyes burned into his mind.

Later, long after the house had fallen into a strained silence, a thirst he couldn't quench drove him downstairs. The kitchen was a cavern of shadows, lit only by a sliver of moonlight through the high, dirty window. And Remus was there.

He sat at the long wooden table, just as he had in the dining room, shoulders slumped forward. A chipped ceramic mug was cradled in his long-fingered hands, steam rising in a faint, ghostly ribbon. He looked up as Sirius entered, his expression guarded, tired. The fight seemed to have drained the last of his energy.

Sirius leaned against the doorframe, shoving his hands into his pockets. The silence stretched, thick with everything they never said.

"Look," Sirius started, his voice rougher than he intended. "About earlier. In the meeting."

Remus just watched him, his amber eyes shadowed. He gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head. "You didn't have to, Sirius."

"Yes, I did," Sirius bit out, the anger flaring again, but this time it was directed at the entire world, at Snape, at Dumbledore, at the war that was grinding Remus down to nothing. "I couldn't just sit there and let him… I can't stand it." The admission felt raw, torn from a place deep inside him he kept locked away. "Seeing you like this. The way you look. It’s…" He couldn't find the right word. Wrecked. Gutted. He gestured vaguely, a helpless flick of his hand. "I hate it."

Remus’s gaze softened for a fraction of a second. He looked down into his tea, his knuckles white where he gripped the mug. "We all have our parts to play." His voice was low, scraped raw.

"This is more than a part, Moony." The old nickname slipped out, tasting of nostalgia and regret. "It's killing you."

The air grew heavy again, charged with the ghosts of a dozen other arguments, a dozen other times one of them had pushed too far and the other had pulled away. Sirius knew he was on that edge now. He pushed off the doorframe, intending to retreat, to go back upstairs before he said something he couldn't take back.

The path to the door took him right past Remus’s chair. The space was tight, cluttered with the detritus of the Weasleys. As he moved past, the back of his hand brushed against Remus’s. It was a fleeting contact—the rough skin of his knuckles against the back of Remus’s fingers, which were cool despite the hot mug they held.

A jolt, sharp and electric, shot up Sirius’s arm. It wasn't just warmth; it was a living current that went straight to his chest, making his heart stumble over a beat. For an instant that felt like an eternity, all he could feel was the point of contact, the texture of Remus's skin against his. His breath caught in his throat. He saw Remus’s fingers twitch, a tiny, reflexive motion. Then the moment was gone. Sirius pulled his hand back as if burned and strode from the kitchen without looking back, the phantom heat of that single, careless touch branded onto his skin.

Sleep was a lost cause. Sirius lay on his back in the lumpy bed, staring up at the water-stained ceiling of his childhood bedroom. The darkness felt alive, crawling with the ghosts of this house. But it wasn't his mother's portrait or the lingering dark magic that kept him awake. It was the memory of Remus’s skin. The brief, accidental press of his knuckles against Remus’s fingers had ignited something he’d spent twelve years in Azkaban trying to freeze to death. The sensation was still there, a phantom warmth tingling on his hand, a stark contrast to the chill that had settled deep in his bones.

He threw the covers off, the frustration too much to contain in stillness. The floorboards were cold beneath his bare feet as he began to pace, a caged animal in a room that had always been his first prison. The house was quiet, but it was a waiting silence, heavy and suffocating. He needed air, or a drink, or something to quiet the noise in his head.

He moved out into the hallway, the shadows clinging to him like a second skin. He didn't have a destination, just a need to walk until the restlessness burned itself out. His feet, however, seemed to have their own agenda. They carried him down the corridor, past the shrieking portrait of his mother covered by its threadbare curtain, and stopped outside the door to Remus’s room.

It was slightly ajar, a dark sliver in the deeper darkness of the hall. And from within, a sound drifted out that made the hair on his arms stand on end. A soft, choked whimper. A sound of pure, animal pain.

Sirius’s heart hammered against his ribs. Every protective instinct screamed at him. He didn’t think. He pushed the door open, the old hinges groaning in protest.

The room was spartan, bare of any personal touch save for a stack of worn books on the nightstand. Moonlight cut a pale rectangle across the floor and the bed, illuminating the scene within. Remus was tangled in the thin sheets, his body twisting as if trying to escape an invisible captor. His head thrashed on the pillow, his brow slick with sweat that gleamed in the dim light. Mumbled, broken words escaped his lips, too garbled to understand but laced with a desperate terror.

Sirius stood frozen in the doorway, a spectator to a private agony. He wanted to go to him, to shake him awake, to pull him out of whatever hell his mind had conjured. But that would be a confession. It would be an admission of everything he felt, everything he saw in Remus’s face that went beyond friendship. It was a line he wasn't sure they could ever uncross.

So he did the only thing he could. He crept into the room, silent as a shadow, and pulled the rickety wooden chair from the corner to the side of the bed. He sat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and just watched. He watched the way Remus’s scarred hands clenched and unclenched in the sheets, the way his jaw was tight with strain. He watched the play of fear across the familiar, beloved features of his friend's face. The longing in his chest was no longer a dull throb; it was a sharp, physical ache, a blade twisting under his ribs. He wanted to reach out, to smooth the lines of pain from Remus’s forehead, to feel the warmth of his skin again, deliberately this time.

Slowly, as Sirius kept his silent vigil, the thrashing subsided. The frantic muttering quieted. Remus’s breathing, which had been ragged and shallow, deepened into a steady, even rhythm. The tension left his body, and he finally settled into a true, exhausted sleep. Sirius didn’t move. He stayed there in the chair, a sentinel in the dark, watching over the only good thing left in his world and aching with a love he was terrified would destroy them both.