"It stopped being a crush for me years ago, Pads," Remus insisted. Midnight meetings on the roof with Sirius and some cigarettes were his favourites; they always made him feel alive, and that's when their conversations hit rock bottom. Deeper than the oceans and all their treasures.
Sirius gave him a funny look, remembering. "The weekend you stayed with me for Christmas?"
"You remember?"
"Of course I do," Sirius frowned. "How could I forget?"
Remus smiled privately. "Not sure if you were really there, you know. You seemed in a bit of a trance after that Regulus thing."
"He told me they didn't want me back, it's not his fault," Sirius looked down. He still regretted everything that tore he and Regulus apart. "We're good again now, though. At least I think we are."
Remus hummed, inching his fingers closer to Sirius' splayed across the roof tiles.
"That Christmas was horrible, but it was also the best," Sirius admitted.
"How so?"
"Well, you made me realise, I guess," he answered. Sirius didn't really know how to express his next words in a way that made sense, but he tried nonetheless. "I guess that ... I never learned how to love, so that when I did, I loved hard. Does that make sense?"
"Sort of," Remus stubbed out his cigarette on the slightly damp roof slates and shuffled about until he was lying with his head in Sirius' lap, the latter playing lazily with his hair. "Tell me more."
"Well, growing up, I didn't really have friends, per se. I was in that god damned house all the time. So when I met James, we sort of bonded instantly. Like a-a connection I'd never had before, and I didn't know what to do with it, honestly. Consequently we developed really intense feelings of protection and love and just pure happiness with each other, so we became literally inseparable, as you know, of course."
Sirius paused to think.
"That's sweet, really Pads, but what does this have to do with Christmas? Us?" Remus asked, but it was purely curiosity, no frustrated tones.
"One second," Sirius gathered up some words and hoped they would make sense. "So ... after James, I sort of became closer with you, as well, and I got strong feelings like I did for James, but for you instead. I would do for you what I did for James, and I just, assumed, I guess, that it was the same thing."
Remus grinned as he figured exactly where this was going.
"It just wasn't, though, and I didn't realise until, what, fourth year? At least fourth year, I think. When I was in the hospital wing with you, and you thanked me for everything that I've done for you, and it made me think. Why don't you thank James as well? But James wasn't there. Not as long as I was. Then I thought, well, I do the equivalent of what I do for you for James, right? But ... I didn't. I do now, I suppose, I owe him that much, but not back then. I didn't drop everything to help James with stuff. I only did pranks and the bare minimum of friendship basics for him. But you? Hell, I'd've writen you a bible had you asked. I still would. So then I was confused because this isn't right. This isn't the same. I thought nothing of it, but when it randomly sprung to mind, especially at the most inconvenient of times, it would just hurt my head to think."
"Sorry," Remus reached up, smiling, "didn't mean to worry your pretty little face."
Sirius grinned. "And after Mary and Marlene, I thought, '...wait, it's the same'. But you're not girl? So I refused to think about it. In denial. Then, at Christmas, when you were there for me like I was for you, I realised. I could never forget that Christmas, Moony, never. That's when I realised I loved you, but not like James," he finished, and looked at Remus with such sincerity it made his skin tingle.
This was the first Remus was hearing of this, but Sirius looked at him as if he gave him the air he breathed. The moon and the sun. The happiness he craved.
"All my stars are your stars," Sirius said, and in that moment, Remus knew. That it was them. It was Sirius.
"It's you," Remus said. He couldn't even blink for fear of missing a single one of Sirius' beautiful, graceful movements. "It's us," he voiced his thoughts.
"But it's always been us, hasn't it Moony?"
——
Years later, that Christmas was still a very important date for the both of them, and continued to be so until their very last breaths, even beyond.
——
{march 5th, 19:09, 2021}

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all my stars | ʷᵒˡᶠˢᵗᵃʳ
Fanfiction❝How's Hogwarts' finest pretty boy today, Remmy?❞ ❝If I were brave, maybe I could tell you.❞ ❝Who is he?!❞ ❝All my stars are your stars. ❞ Basically just a ton of lil headcannon and scenes/oneshots and I guess you could call them and use them as pro...