💔
Their relationship had been built on lies, and Sirius shouldn’t have been surprised that it all crashed down on them as soon as they began to learn the truths of each others’ lives. The glasses thrown against the walls, pictures torn, screaming matches and endless how could you’s tossed at one another, until he went out the door and never came back.
It was a risk he had been so willing to take in the beginning - Janus was supposed to fix the world, but Sirius never quite understood how he let himself become that delusional to sacrifice the one good thing he had in his life for nothing in comparison. And he might have accepted it as an inevitable consequence of his actions if he never found out that Remus had been lying to him all along. The wolves, and Sirius should have known about them. How Remus kept disappearing in the middle of the night, only to wave his hand at him and tell him it was nothing to worry about. At one point, he even thought Remus was seeing someone else and god, it was pathetic how he would have been willing to look over even that. Something was lost between them. Trust, maybe, he thought. But he never stopped loving him.
Five years was ample time to forget about someone like Remus Lupin, Sirius once had (incorrectly) thought, but as he stood across from the familiar sand-colored hair and those haunting eyes, he began to wonder if the last five years had been for nothing. And he’d tried so fucking hard, made sure to busy himself every single day to dull that painful ache in his heart and here Remus was, tearing all of his efforts down with a single glance.
“You’re - ”
He’d tried so hard. He’d moved on, found someone else to love, and he wished he could turn back time even just by twenty seconds so he could have taken a different street. The ring on his finger had never felt heavier.
“ - engaged, yeah.” Remus always did hate how Sirius finished his sentences for him. He never gave Remus enough space, thinking about on it now, and Sirius wanted to go back and fix it all. Because he would have held on tighter. “I’m sorry.” For what?
He hadn’t meant to apologize. Remus seemed confused by his words for a moment, and all Sirius could do was let out an exhausted laugh, tugging at his scarf to see if he could, in any way, ease the tightening of his throat. He didn’t want to believe that this was because of him, he desperately needed it to be something else - but he knew. There was a hand on his wrist, warm and all too familiar, and if his breath hitched, Sirius would never admit it. “Breathe,” He heard Remus say, and he did. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”