Archive of Our Own

In Sirius' mind, winter is to blame.

On every ward, all staff—clinical and administrative alike—brace themselves as the first true bite of frost settles in silvery webs. Winter means the hacking, wet coughs of pneumonia or the dry, sharp bark of bronchitis. It ushers in terrifying spikes in strokes and heart attacks, places black ice under cautious feet and brings them crashing to the ground with a crack—

Winter in the National Health Service is not for the faint-hearted. And every November, Remus throws himself into it with all the enthusiasm of a person who is not chronically ill, and works overtime like he doesn't need to be careful with the body Sirius loves so, so much. 

But then again, Sirius muses, perhaps this whole mess began over the UK’s bone-dry summer; its blistering days and baking nights blew in a stampede of patients presenting with heatstroke, severe sunburn, infected insect bites, and, of course, the ever-lurking flu. Broken bones snapped at boozy barbecues, bloody noses smashed against the edge of a slippery swimming pool, messy multi-car pileups thanks to the hazy midsummer air—

It had been a particularly bad one, and they haven't really caught a break since. The hospital has stayed relentlessly busy, and Remus, as Lead Emergency Medicine Consultant in Accidents & Emergencies, perhaps more than most. It’s a title he fought tooth and bloody nail to achieve, and Sirius truly couldn't be prouder of him—of them both—if only the cost weren't so severe. 

If Sirius is being honest with himself, though, this situation has been deteriorating since the early days of the pandemic in 2019. That was the last time Sirius could say with any certainty that his husband would be home when he was—as dictated by the rota—supposed to be not at work. 

He and Remus don't speak much about those dark pandemic days: the sheer weight of so much loss and suffering and interminable isolation, the constant terror of the disease's particles clinging to their clothes, the colleagues they lost, both physically and mentally. It's not stoicism, or some stupid Britishness that seals their lips shut when someone jokes about their breezy lockdown experience. For Sirius, at least, it's more that if he has to acknowledge how truly fucking traumatising that era was, it would mean the end of his career in medicine, as it had for so many of his peers. Having to relive Remus' own stint with COVID-19 that saw him end up in intensive care for a fortnight—the worst fortnight of Sirius’ entire fucking life—

He can't go there. 

And so, yeah, Sirius blames the pandemic for warping Remus into someone determined to work themselves to the grave, but it's a topic he can scarcely broach without his chest tightening at the reminder of Remus lying there with all those fucking tubes. And no, having an intimate understanding of what each of those tubes do is not the relief he might have hoped it would be when it's the love of his life in that bed. 

But it's not like they can even catch a break from reminders, with Remus contracting long-COVID of all things. It makes Sirius' heart clench every time they have to cancel plans with friends due to Remus' bone-deep fatigue, when Remus is close to tears because of his aching body, or at how hard Remus is on himself for the perpetual brain fog.

He just wants Remus to stop for a while. To stop and remember that life is more than work, work, work (sorry, Rihanna), that he is more than work, work, work.

But not like this.

💉💊🩺

Three weeks earlier

“Well, obviously, Prongs. I'm not an idiot—fuck off—”

“I didn't say anything!” James protests, flinging his hands up so enthusiastically that he almost tips his to-go mug of coffee all over Sirius' car (not that it would have done much damage, given the near-radioactive state of the car's interior as is). 

“Watch it!” Sirius turns into the hospital car park and blasts his horn at the wanker who swooped in and stole the space he'd been aiming for. “Arsehole,” he mutters instead, swinging a little too aggressively into the next row of the car park. 

“Wow,” James says. “Padfoot, mate—you need to chill out.” 

“You need to chill out,” Sirius mimics him in a cruel, high voice, and then falters at once at the silence that ensues. 

He turns to look at his best friend of four decades, a little sheepishly. 

“You're fifty-five, not five,” James tells him flatly.

“Shit. Sorry.” 

(Though did James really have to remind him of how close they are to sixty at—he glances at the clock beneath his speedometer—8:20am? He's grumpy enough as it is.)

“As I was saying,” James pauses as Sirius finally locates a space and manoeuvres into it. “Moony has so many talents, but mind-reading isn't one of them. Maybe if you tried talking to him about it—”

“Moony doesn't think there's anything wrong with his insane shifts, Prongs—that’s part of the issue! It's fine for him; he's not the one being collared by our mates being like your husband looks like shit, why aren't you taking better care of him? As if I've ever been able to tell Moony what to do.”

He can tell James is struggling to know what to say, and, frankly, Sirius is past the point of wanting to hear it. He's been in a foul mood since waking up alone in bed this morning—yet again—and realising that—yet again—Remus didn't come home from the hospital last night. Remus isn't supposed to drive with his chronic fatigue, but he also ignored Sirius' texts offering to pick him up on the way back from a Neurology Conference in London, then his offers to order him a taxi, and even his pleas to get a lift home with one of their colleagues (which Remus does even less than the first two options, much preferring the painfully slow and unreliable bus journey to allowing his friends to help him). All of this to say, he's probably gone and pulled another crazy thirty-six-hour shift. And they are heading into another hellish NHS December, when the last one nearly wiped out Remus and his fucked immune system with a truly hideous flu.

This shit was fine when they were resident doctors (it wasn't fine, but Sirius could cope with the odd insane shift back then), but now they are in their mid-fifties, and he's fucking tired of it. He's fucking tired, full stop. They aren't built to be working like they're fresh out of medical school anymore—and arguably, they never should have been asked to pull those kinds of shifts, but it's hard to marry that with what he knows was needed of him. 

(This isn't what Sirius wants for them, for Remus, for the life they've so carefully built together. He doesn't know how to explain to James that it feels like he's losing Remus, even when his husband is standing right in front of him).

Sirius flicks the engine off and smacks the centre of the wheel in frustration. It emits a loud BEEP right as an elderly lady and her daughter are hobbling in front of the car. The daughter looks up sharply and scowls at him. 

Sirius lets out a groan, sinking lower in his seat, whilst James waves an apologetic hand. 

“Come on, sunshine,” James says once the coast is clear. “Everything will feel better once you've had some delicious staff room coffee.” He squeezes Sirius' shoulder, leaning across to nudge him out of the door. 

“Ugh, don't mock me,” Sirius says mournfully, dreaming of the steaming thermos he'd left on the side in his morning rush. Acid-reflux-inducing, lukewarm staff room coffee it is! 

James loops an arm through Sirius', steering them through the entrance of the hospital. The Reception area is already bustling, and there's activity in every corridor they hurry through. Eventually, they reach what is possibly the least maintained hallway in the hospital, with its peeling linoleum flooring and flickering strip lighting, and bundle themselves into the staff changing rooms. 

A handful of their colleagues are already there; some are bleary-eyed and zombie-like as they pull off grubby scrubs and deposit them in the laundry pile, others are exchanging pleasantries as they sort through clean scrubs to start their shifts. Sirius follows James over to the wall of lockers, nodding at Gideon from Cardiology (arriving for the day, bright-eyed and beaming) and his brother Fabian from Ophthalmology (also arriving, albeit a lot less enthusiastically). 

Frank, Head Porter and not-so-fresh off a night shift, is standing in front of his battered locker, head resting against the cool metal and eyes closed. James nudges him gently, and Frank startles, flailing wildly. 

"Alright, mate?" Sirius catches Frank's elbow and strains to keep him upright—Frank is a veritable wall of muscle and his biceps are firm beneath Sirius' hands. 

"Yeah—fuck, thanks, Black." Frank turns to James. "Motherfucker, Potter, you scared the shit out of me."

"What's with all the foul language this morning?" James says dramatically to his locker, scooping out his scrubs with a sigh. As the hospital's Lead Consultant Paediatrician, his are black with a red trim (and match Sirius' as Lead Neurology Consultant). "First, he—" he nods at Sirius, "—is out here accosting the elderly—"

"I honked her by accident!"

"That's what she said," Frank mumbles tiredly.

"—and now you’re here dropping f-bombs before 9:00am, Longbottom!" Sirius and Frank roll their eyes in unison, and James sighs ever more dramatically. "I get no respect in this place."

"Possibly because your locker looks like a teenage girl's, mate," Frank says, jabbing a finger at the glittery, colourful state of James' locker, with hand-drawn cards and artwork pinned to the sides. 

"Number one, there's nothing wrong with teenage girls, and I say that as someone who thought he had a teenage girl until Harry came out. Number two, you're just jealous that kids aren't gifting you this kind of stuff," James says smugly. "Perks of working in Paedology."

Frank grins, wiping a hand over his tired eyes. "Something like that, bud. Right, I'm off. Have a good one—oh! Shit!" Frank turns sharply to Sirius, all fatigue seemingly banished. "Don't panic, Black, but—"

"Why the fuck would you start a sentence like that?" Sirius snaps, the spike of anxiety almost tripping him up where he's yanking on his trousers.

"It's Lupin."

Sirius' body feels instantly numb, as though someone has coated his insides in Lidocaine, and it's only decades' worth of experience in high-pressure situations that means his voice comes out steady: "What happened? Where is he?"

Frank winces. "He's fine now, Black—it's just—well. He collapsed in the night, but—" 

Sirius is already moving, panic clawing in his belly and a sharp alertness settling in his vision ('under stress, the sympathetic nervous system triggers the adrenal glands to release a surge of adrenaline,' his brain helpfully reminds him). 

"He's fine, Black. Lily saw to him and he's back on his feet, but—"

 "Where is my fucking husband, Longbottom?"

"Where he always is," Frank raises his hands in submission. "I swear to you, he's fine now, Black—"

Sirius doesn't hear the rest, doesn't hear anything at all except his feet slapping against the squeaky floor and heart pounding in his chest. All corridors in the hospital lead to A&E, and it's usually a brisk five-minute stride there from the changing rooms. 

Today, Sirius makes it in two. 

A text arrives as he skids through the swing doors to A&E, and he only spares it a glance because he's triple-checking that Remus hadn't texted to let him know that he'd fucking collapsed because what the hell?! (He hadn't, of course, which hurts almost as much as the twisted scenarios Sirius' brain is conjuring up.)

Prongs (08:34): F says Lily sorted him out and it was just a weird blood sugar thing and R threatened them all if they tried to call you

Prongs (08:35): F also wants me to reiterate: R is FINE, DO NOT PANIC

You (08:35): i don't give a shit what he said. you call me next time

Prongs (08:36): Don't shoot the messenger babe, you know I'm on your side

In the first stroke of luck of the day, Remus happens to be the first thing Sirius sees upon stumbling to a halt. 

He has his back to Sirius, apparently completing a hands-off handover with a paramedic and two members of his team, and Sirius forces himself to keep from barging straight up to Remus and demanding an explanation.

The paramedic is rattling off the ATMIST details: "Male, 28 years. RTC at 0805, head-on collision at 45mph. Suspected spinal injury, scalp lacerations. Pulse 110, BP 100/60, GCS 13. Administered oxygen, IV fluids; field dressing applied." Remus is listening intently, eyes following where the patient is being carefully transferred from an ambulance stretcher to a hospital trolley. The paramedic has barely finished speaking before Remus is nodding.

Sirius watches as Remus directs his team to begin hypotensive resuscitation and to fast-track the patient for a FAST scan to detect internal bleeding. It never fails to impress Sirius how steady and secure a presence Remus is in his role, especially knowing how hard Remus has fought his mental—and physical—health to get there. The resident doctors may have the rabbit-in-headlights look of the overworked and underpaid, but they move at once at the sound of his calm authority. (If he were in a better mood and less frustrated with his husband, watching him be so fucking competent and brilliant would also make him feel extremely attracted to him, but right now, that's a long-distant thought.)

Now that he has his eyes on Remus, the panic that had flooded his system is starting to dissipate ('the parasympathetic nervous system will now begin to calm the body down, though it may still feel drained due to the heightened energy expenditure and chemical imbalance'), to be replaced by his earlier frustration and hurt and concern. 

Remus does look okay—or at least, as okay as he ever does these days.

And then suddenly, the handover is complete. The ambulance team zip off, Remus' staff are busily either working on the newest arrival or triaging the 'fit-to-sit' patients to other departments, and Remus…

… is staring at Sirius with an oddly resigned look in his eyes.

"Lily told you?" he says, trying for a smile, and it galls Sirius that he's trying to make light of this.

"Frank, actually." His voice comes out low and cool, and Remus winces as he continues. "Care to explain why I had to find it out from him instead of you?"

Remus moves towards him, wrapping his fingers around Sirius' forearm and avoiding eye contact. "Not here," he says quietly, and Sirius allows himself to be led to what passes for Remus' office—though, as he has lamented repeatedly for years, is more of a cleaning cupboard—without complaint. Causing a scene in the middle of A&E would hardly be conducive to the stability of their patients, after all. 

Now that he's this close to Remus, he can see the beginnings of a bruise casting shadows across Remus' cheekbone, the way he is subtly favouring his left side as he moves.

"Dr. Lupin," a resident doctor cuts across their path. "I need your guidance on—"

Remus, much to Sirius' incredulous annoyance, pauses as if he's actually going to follow his colleague (who surely cannot be old enough to be a resident doctor looking at his baby face?! Christ, the fact that he and Remus once looked that young, it feels insane that they were trusted with people's lives). 

"Nuh-uh," Sirius says, pulling them onwards. "Sorry, kid. Dr. Lupin is busy right now."

"Sirius," Remus hisses, shooting an apologetic look behind him. "That was rude, what the hell?”

The second the office door closes, Sirius whirls around in the limited space, sending one of the piles of documents scattering around him like confetti. His movement also disturbs the teetering pile of face masks, gloves, and other PPE that clatters to the floor in a slow-motion tumble. 

Well. He's been accused of being something of a drama queen before, he may as well embrace it.

Remus watches him warily. Beneath the light of a single energy-saving bulb, he looks worse still; the shadows conspiring with the bags under his eyes to make him look even more of a zombie. His half lean against his cluttered desk allows it to take the weight of his right knee—Sirius is willing to bet their mortgage that there's another colossal bruise forming beneath his scrubs. 

"Explain," he says at last, and he means it to come out cool and collected, righteously angry, or at least the kind of frustrated that will indicate he's not in the mood to dance around the topic any longer. Except it doesn't come out like that at all—far worse, it's imbued with a soul-deep sadness that aches as it scrapes itself from his throat. 

He sees it land with Remus, and the way he begins to move to comfort Sirius before forcing himself to stop. "I don't know exactly what Frank said, but—"

"That you collapsed in the night and threatened our friends to keep me in the dark about it."

Remus winces. "It's not as bad as they're making it sound, Padfoot, I promise—"

"Don't you dare downplay this, Moony," and there, at last is the steel. 

(For a long time, Sirius had thought that he was the problem—that Remus just didn't put enough stock in the relationship to talk about his feelings. Of course, now he knows differently; that Remus' specific brand of autism and alexithymia just makes it harder for him to judge things like hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. But it's still an uphill battle to remind himself of this when Remus is standing before him, insisting that everything is fine when his body has given exceptionally clear signals that it is not fine!)

But Remus doubles down. "I'm not. My blood sugar levels were just off, because I forgot to eat, and I blacked out for literally a few seconds, and fell flat on my face, and now I'm fine."

"Did you hit your head?" Sirius says sharply, fresh horror pooling in his belly.

"No," Remus says. "It was more of a sideways slump than anything. I caught my face on a cabinet, but I'm fine."

“You're limping.”

“Well, sideways slump—I caught my side a bit too, but lucky for me, I'm well-padded.” He pats the swell of his belly in the same jokey way he always does when he refers to his size—in a way that Sirius loathes for the self-hatred it contains. 

“That's not funny.”

Remus sighs. “I'm not trying to be funny.”

"You don't even hear yourself," Sirius says, tugging at his hair in frustration, picking up volume as he barrels on. "You forgot to eat—again, by the way—and you passed out, and then you went straight back to work again! Please tell me you understand that's fucked up."

"It wasn't straight away," Remus says, an edge of petulance in his tone. "Lily made me rest for at least an hour." 

Sirius buries his face in his hands. "And then you hid it from me—me, of all people!"

"Because I knew you'd react like this!" Remus, at last, raises his voice to match the ragged desperation in Sirius. "I knew you'd freak out when everything is fine, and—"

"It's not fine!" Sirius yells, raising his head to stare incredulously at Remus. "None of this is fucking fine!"

There's a long pause. 

He can tell that Remus has no idea what to say, his eyes darting helplessly around the room as if the social cues for apologising for scaring the shit out of your husband will be written across the bottles of disinfectant. Outside the room, A&E continues its ever-mad rush of activity, and Remus' pager beeps insistently at them, but for once, he doesn't move.

"And now," Sirius continues, voice quiet, "I'm the arsehole yelling at you when you've been unwell, and I just—" He closes his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough that Fabian would be squawking about pressure damage, but it's still not hard enough to hold the goddamn tears at bay. 

"It's not even about the fact that it happened, Moony, it's—" His voice cracks mortifyingly, in a way that it hasn't since he was in his twenties and trying to rebuild his life after being disowned. "It's that I didn't know. That you didn't want me to know."

He is aching so loudly for physical touch that it's a breath-taking relief when Remus' arms encircle him tightly. For a second, maybe two, Sirius allows himself the touch like a drowning man gulping down fresh air, but then he's trying to pull away. "Don't comfort me after I've yelled at you," he says, his voice pathetically wobbly.

Remus just tightens his hold. "Don't be a plonker," he murmurs, planting a hard kiss on Sirius' temple. "Only room for one of those in this relationship, and I'm pretty sure it's not you."

Sirius tries for a laugh, but it collapses halfway through into a wet half-sob. 

Remus squeezes tighter still, hooking his chin over Sirius' shoulder. The steadiness of his heart pressed against Sirius' chest is the tether he needs to cling to, and he finds himself matching breaths with Remus as they stand in their strange, desperate embrace. Like this, Sirius can feel the lovely softness of the belly Remus despises, as well as the full weight of his exhaustion as he sags into Sirius. 

When Remus finally speaks, Sirius hears it as a rumble from the very core of him. "I'm sorry I scared you," he says softly into the shell of Sirius' ear, and Sirius feels any remaining scraps of anger buckling beneath the sincerity there. "It's—it's not that I didn't want you to know. I just… if you knew, you would have come and got me and made me take a day off—"

Sirius swallows and pulls back the tiniest amount to lean their foreheads together. "Yeah, of course I would, you nutter. Because I fucking love you and you're important to me, and I need you to stick around for a long, long time to come."

Remus' eyes twitch in what Sirius thinks might have been an aborted eye roll, but now that he's in Remus' arms, it's harder to muster the frustration once more. "It was just because I hadn't eaten. You can ask Lily; she can even show you my test results if that would help."

"Yeah, well, she's not exactly in my good books right now."

"I made her promise, Sirius," Remus says. "Which—" he continues quickly as Sirius opens his mouth, "—I appreciate now was the wrong thing to do.”

Sirius nods once. He brings up one hand to trace the soft edge of Remus' jaw and the even softer down of facial hair that's growing there. He runs the pad of his thumb along Remus' cheekbone, fingers gliding over what promises to be a spectacular bruise tomorrow. "You've lost weight," he says quietly, careful to keep his voice neutral given how Remus feels about his—well, everything.

"I'm fine, Padfoot," Remus allows the exasperation to shine through his words now, sensing they are in the clear. His hands come up to cup Sirius' cheek and he draws him in for the tenderest of kisses: barely a brush of their lips, and yet still pouring so much adoration through the gentle touch. 

“How is your pain today?” Sirius murmurs. 

Remus pulls a face. “No worse than usual.”

“Number?”

Remus drops his head to rest against Sirius' shoulder once more. “A five.”

Sirius mentally adds another one, knowing Remus’ penchant for downplaying his pain. “And the brain fog?”

“Padfoot?” Remus' voice is tired but amused. 

“Yes?”

“You’re not my doctor.”

Sirius makes an exaggerated little wounded noise, relishing in the snort it elicits from Remus. He's careful to keep his voice light as he cups his hand under Remus' chin, fingers warm on the softness that folds into a delightful double chin at the right angles. “I know I'm not your doctor, love. But I am your husband, and your husband wants to know what's going on for you at all times.”

Remus wrinkles his noise. “Why are you talking in third person like that?”

Sirius rolls his eyes. “Of course that's your takeaway. Come here.” He moves flush against Remus, and gently tilts their lips together, one hand circling Remus' plush waist, and the other stroking up and down the apple of his cheek. 

It's a deliciously soft kiss, made softer still by the way Remus sighs into it, giving up some of his weight to the sheer pleasure of the kiss. It's torturous to pull away, but there's one more question niggling at Sirius, and he can't surrender fully to kissing Remus—which is a crime, really—with it rattling around his brain. 

“Just to be clear. You not eating isn't some body shaming shit, right?”

Remus frowns. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I just—” Fuck, this is not an ideal conversation to have on top of the heaviness of their previous conversation. “I know how you feel about your body. And I know you've talked in the past about diets and shit—” 

(Conversations that Sirius had shut down hard—not because he wouldn't support Remus wholeheartedly if he announced he wanted to eat a little ‘better’  than their admittedly shitty diets, but because it came from such a place of self-loathing and fatphobia that it terrified him to think of Remus acting on those feelings.)

Remus looks down at himself with a sigh, plucking his top away from his stomach where it clings. “I genuinely forgot. This wasn't a weight loss thing.”

“Okay. Thank you, Moony. You… you know I love you and your body, right?”

Remus sighs. “Can we go back to kissing?” He doesn't even wait for a response before he's leaning in once more. 

When they pull apart, Sirius knows he's wearing the same dopey smile as on their wedding day. For a brief moment, he forgets that they're in Remus' cramped office, that there are hundreds of people who will demand their attention, that they are both a lot older and more haggard than that gorgeous summery day of their past. 

And then Remus' pager goes off once more, and he huffs a laugh, knocking their foreheads together once more before pulling out of their embrace. 

"Duty calls," he says quietly, pulling it out of his pocket and examining the code flitting across the screen. He takes a deep breath. "I'll see you at home?"

Sirius shakes his head. "I'll drive us. Meet me in the car park?"

He can see the moment Remus wants to argue (and has one hundred counter-arguments just waiting to go, starting with if we go together, I will at least know you're coming home for once) but to his credit, Remus concedes with a nod. 

Remus moves to open the door, but Sirius grabs his arm. "Wait—" He leans over to rummage through the top drawer of Remus' desk, withdrawing a packet of protein bars with a triumphant, "ah-ha!" 

Remus blinks at him. "When did you…?"

"I stashed them in here like… two months ago. When you first mentioned that you were forgetting to eat. Please have one?"

Remus pulls out one of the bars, his smile impossibly fond. "You even got me the peanut-chocolate ones?" 

"Of course, I'm not a monster."

Remus grins properly for the first time since Sirius has laid eyes on him today, bright enough to take his breath away for a moment, crooked teeth and one-sided dimple and all. "Have a good shift, love," he says, leaning over to press a swift kiss to Sirius' cheek. 

He leaves the office taking a healthy chomp out of the bar, and Sirius forces himself to take a deep breath. 

Remus is fine. Everything is fine. He'll see him again at the end of the day, and they'll actually spend the evening together, and Sirius will get to look after his husband for the first time in weeks.

Now he just has to get to the Neurology Ward, and apologise profusely to Alice, his fellow Neuro Consultant and wife to Frank, for being—Sirius glances at his watch and winces. Oof—twenty minutes late.

 Time to go. 

💉

Without wishing to toot his own horn—and Frank would definitely find a joke in that somewhere but Sirius is too tired to reach for it—he's fucking good at what he does. And perhaps that goes without saying, given that he's been the undisputed Head of Department for twelve years now, but one of the things he has always prided himself on has been his ability to compartmentalise. 

It's how he pushed through his medical exams in third year despite his brother's death just two months before his finals. It's how he continued coming into work in the pandemic even as he watched his colleagues dropping like Remus’ blood sugar levels around him. It means that he's—to be frank—brilliant at spotting what others miss, that he's able to explain devastating news to patients with genuine compassion and expertise, but none of his own messy emotions.

Which is why it's fucking infuriating that he's failing so miserably at it right now. 

Sirius moves through his day with Remus seeping into every facet of it:

He's called to the emergency department to support with diagnosing a stroke in a 58-year-old male, and, when the CT scan comes back with a clear indication of a blockage having prevented the blood supply to the brain, Sirius oversees his consultants working to stabilise the man by lowering his blood pressure, establishing the need for a thrombectomy, scheduling his swallow test and, and, and—

(And the whole fucking time, he's on high alert for the possibility of seeing Remus racing around the department in his element. He doesn't see Remus, and the disappointment is almost as crushing as the realisation that this man has a dubious, offensive tattoo on his right forearm. Of course, it doesn't change the level of care he receives, but it's the kind of thing that Remus would have the perfect, dry remark to shut down.) 

He's called to the ICU twice, first to provide advice for a patient presenting with sudden, uncontrollable seizures, and later to confirm brain death for one of the younger patients on the ward, much to the devastation of her grieving family.

(And the ICU will always make him think of Remus, and The Fortnight That Must Not Be Named, but even more so when the girl's tearful mother tucks a cuddly platypus into her daughter's sheets—because what the fuck are the chances of Remus having the same weird-ass favourite animal as this patient?)

He and Alice take turns at supporting ward rounds, before he's back in his office to meet with the newest speech therapist (which reminds him that Remus having grown up in poverty had ruined his baby teeth and made him speak with a lisp until he was fourteen years old). 

Sirius ends his day with a thick wad of EEGs for interpreting, the majority of which are routine and straightforward, until he flips over to one that has such significant and abnormal brain activity that Sirius would bet money he's looking at the scan of a young person with epilepsy.

It's hardly an unusual sensation—the drop in his stomach like he's plunging off a bungee jump, the cool dread of memory—but on a day he's already feeling vulnerable, such a stark reminder of Regulus feels sharp. He finds himself longing for a hug from Remus, or just for Remus' quiet understanding to envelop him in its glow like only he can.

With a sigh, Sirius pushes away from his desk. He sees epilepsy cases all the time; he has these spiky reminders of Regulus all the goddamn time—there was a reason he chose to specialise in epilepsy, after all—but today, he doesn't have it in him to push past the pain.

Instead, he finds himself unlocking his phone, half hoping for a message from Remus, even though he knows Remus doesn't carry his phone with him when he's on shift.

The neat little stack of messages from Lily are an unpleasant reminder of the morning's events:

Lils (09:51): look. i know you are probably furious at me and i get it! i'm sending you his results right now so you can see that it genuinely was him forgetting to eat and that he's gonna be fine.

Lils (09:52): [Images attached] GDPR, who?

Lils (09:54): i know GDPR doesn't count here bc you're married but i'm hilarious so let me joke about it

Lils (10:03): however! to be clear i did NOT give him permission to go back to work like he did! i am also furious with him for that 

You (15:18): just saw these, thanks. blood pressure looks a little high, no?

Lils (15:31): thank fuck, i thought you were so mad at me i was blocked

Lils (15:32): a little, but that's not super surprising. RTC victims came in about an hour before and one of them didn't make it so police were there etc. 

You (15:34): ok. i'm not mad at you anymore lils. i'm married to him, i know how stubborn he is 🫠

Lils (15:35): you know i love him but yeah. just wish he would be better to himself, you know?? 

Sirius taps out a heart react on the message, suddenly utterly drained. She couldn't have put it better, but the thought of communicating that to Remus exhausts him further. 

God knows how Remus is faring after almost no sleep.

The end of the day cannot come soon enough.

💉💊🩺

Remus never means for things to go as far as they do. He never means to hurt the people he loves with his actions—in fact, he'd sat in his autism assessment and tried to explain just that to the professional. "I want to be better," he had said. "I want to understand people better so I can stop upsetting them."

And some forty years on, he's still here hurting the people he loves more than anything in the world. 

He can tell Sirius doesn't quite get it, though Remus knows how hard he tries to understand.

But a small, terrible voice in Remus' head keeps pointing out that Sirius doesn't understand how hard Remus is trying. 

(And shit, he is truly beyond exhaustion with trying so hard. It's like clawing himself out of a coma every single morning—or evening, depending on what his shifts require of him—and having to relearn every single motion with the bare dredges of his energy. The fatigue is in his bones, his cells, his very soul.)

(Obviously, being the Head of A&E was never supposed to be easy. And being a person is so much harder than anyone ever indicated. But does it have to be this fucking hard?)

As daft as it sounds, though, Remus genuinely does not recognise his own warning signs until he's trying to meet Sirius' disappointed gaze—and has disappointment ever looked as beautiful as it does when it's swirled through with molten silver? 

His brain moves fast and locks onto a problem like a T-cell receptor to an antigen-presenting cell, which is partly what makes him so good in A&E. And then… it's like his hunger, his exhaustion, his very emotions are background noise until someone points them out.

It sounds ridiculous for someone in their 50s to be struggling with something that most people know instinctively before they can talk, and Remus is tired of battling the thick cascade of shame that piles on when he has to admit he doesn't fucking know if he's thirsty and he doesn't remember when he last drank something.

All of this is churning through Remus' brain as he moves through the day in A&E. He's functioning on only a few moments of snatched unconsciousness, but he's countering the occasional dizzy spells by simply not being still.

At the same time, he's replaying Sirius' words and hurt expression, and overlaying it with the memory of a conversation he'd had with Frank a couple of years back. It had been during an illicit cigarette—which neither Sirius nor Alice know about—and had simply cemented what Remus had instinctively known from his earliest days working in medicine:

"It's different for us," Frank had said, scuffing his shoes into the dust of the well-being garden. 

"What do you mean?" Remus had asked. 

"You and me, we're from working-class families, right? Big up Hull."

Remus had nodded. "And the Wirral." 

Frank had nodded sagely. "And how many people who speak like us did you meet when you were an undergrad? Or when you started as a junior doctor—or resident they're calling it now, I guess? And how long did it take you to unlearn your accent?"

Remus had bitten his lip, taking a long pull on the cigarette to avoid responding immediately. But he had known the answer instantly: one, zero, and six months respectively, after relentless teasing from colleagues on his course and having patients complain, "we can't understand the northern one."

"That's what I mean," Frank had said after a long pause. "It's different for us, who didn't go to fucking fancy grammar schools and shit. We didn't have our parents' money to put us through university. It's why I became a porter instead. I realised I was killing myself trying to work three jobs just to become a doctor." He takes another pull of his cigarette. “And now I have a brilliant wife who did get all those opportunities and gets to be the breadwinner, but she doesn't get it like you do. It's not really a conversation you can have without sounding like a wazzock.”

Remus had nodded. Frank's words had conjured up his own memories of working sixty hours a week and sending anything spare home to his parents. He doesn't regret that per se, and he wouldn't give up his job for anything in the world. But it was more than a little upsetting to realise how much he destroyed his own physical and mental health to get here, where his peers—Sirius included—were able to sail through thanks to their backgrounds.

"And," Frank had continued. "I bet it's even harder for you, with the autism and the gay shit and—"

Remus had snorted. "The gay shit—Frank, at least call it the bisexual shit, come on." 

Frank had laughed, and the conversation had moved on, but Frank's words had dug into Remus' bones. Because he's right. Sirius and James and so many of his colleagues at the hospital simply did not have as much to prove in the same way that Remus does.  

Not only that, but Remus' brain cannot help but latch onto the fact that there are always more people in pain—there is always more he can do to help. 

And so he does.

And he does it today, despite how cloudy his brain feels, despite the dizziness, despite his lingering frustration that Sirius did not understand why he hadn't called him.

No single day is the same in the emergency department, and Remus moves through the waiting patients, supporting with triage, ordering blood tests and CT scans as needed, walking—or sprinting—the resident doctors through managing an acute cardiac issue, dropping in and out of the cubicles as his pager dictates. He apologises as the inevitable and ongoing short-staffing means that many of the patients are waiting longer than the promised four hours, taking their anger and frustration in stride and blending it with his own.

It's busy in a way that it never used to be when he started out in medicine, and drains him in a way that has nothing to do with growing older. 

And then, right towards the end of his shift, when he's finally starting to dream of his bed and a night in Sirius' arms, he walks into the waiting room to see his least favourite type of admission: a police officer. Or, more accurately, two police officers flanking a highly distressed young woman, whose sleeves are heavy with crusted blood.

"Marlene," he calls, and the other Senior Consultant on shift beelines to him. Marlene has only recently transferred to this hospital, but has fast become one of Remus' most dependable colleagues. Her ability to make connections is almost spookily fast, which she claims is thanks to her witchy senses (Remus has not yet figured out if she's joking). "Has she been assessed and had a history taken?"

Marlene's eyes follow Remus' nod, and her gaze softens. "Yes. Female, 21, significant lacerations on both wrists and suspected suicide attempt. She's refusing treatment; the police are talking about sectioning her, which is really freaking her out. There's a history of mental illness and psychiatric intervention in her family. The police were called by a neighbour to do a welfare check and found her like this." She gestured back to the girl. "Poor thing is scared out of her mind." 

"Any diagnoses? Medication?"

Marlene consults the notes from her assessment. "She is being assessed for EUPD, currently on Sertraline, 100mg." 

"Any substances?"

"No. There was a significant amount of medication in her home but she had not appeared to have taken it yet, and her bloods confirmed this."

Remus frowns. "Okay. Thank you, Marlene. I'll take this one if you can start preparing for the evening handover?"

Marlene nods, the motion causing her curls—dyed black and red in stripes around her head—to bounce. "On it. I'm around if you want to debrief afterwards." She squeezes his arm and moves away, and Remus heads over to the vulnerable young woman.

"Hi," he says, looking directly at the woman, but she doesn't react to his voice.

The police officer jumps in. "I'm PC Finch-Fletchley," he says. "Do you know how much longer this will take?" 

Remus bites back the retort he wants to unleash, and forces a cool smile. As if people in mental health crises can be portioned into thirty-minute intervals—ah yes, twenty-eight minutes gone, I'm cured now! For fuck's sake. "As long as it needs to. I would like to continue her assessment in private, thank you."

PC Finch-Fletchley scowls. "I'm not supposed to—"

“I wasn't asking, Constable," Remus says sharply. "As you should know, she has a right to confidentiality in her treatment and I intend to honour that."

The police officer's scowl deepens, a thick crevice appearing between his eyebrows. Remus doesn't particularly care; his mother raised him to have a healthy respect for authority and Remus maintains that, but not in here, where patient well-being overrides any perceived hierarchies.

Remus tunes out of the man's response, instead crouching to address the woman directly. "Would you like to come with me? I just want to have a chat about what happens next. We'll only be in one of those cubicles, but if you would prefer, I can find you a female consultant to speak with." He points clearly over to the rows of curtained-off cubicles, and the woman raises her eyes to follow his gesture, then looks back at him, eyes flicking up and down. She gives a tiny nod, getting to somewhat unsteady feet.

(That was one positive of the way his body changed in recovering from long-COVID; his roundness apparently makes him appear even less threatening than when he was long and gangly.)

"Doctor—" the police officer starts, but his grumbling is swallowed up by the bustle of the mid-afternoon emergency department, and by the time he and the woman are seated in a cubicle, it has just become a part of the background noise.

She sits in the chair opposite him, hunched over in her seat as if she is trying to make herself as small as possible. Her head hangs forward so that her strawberry-blonde bangs hide a lot of her face, and her fingers twist anxiously in her lap.

"What's your name?" he asks her gently, and her eyes snap to him. 

"Florence," she whispers. "But everyone calls me Flo."

"Hi, Flo. I'm Remus."

"Hi," she says in the tiniest voice. 

"I know you've seen a whole bunch of my colleagues already," Remus says. "Would you mind if I check your wrists and make sure the stitches are secure?" He reaches out to start sanitising his hands, shivering at the cold sliminess that plops into his palm. 

There's a pause, but then, wordlessly, she holds out her wrists, allowing Remus to peer at the layers of bandages. The cuts are longer and deeper than he sometimes sees in patients with this kind of presentation, but the nurses did an excellent job; her stitches are neat and well-spaced, and Remus can see the beginnings of clots at the inflamed edges. 

"Thank you," he tells her softly, disposing of the soiled bandages and re-sanitising the area around the cuts. She winces a little, and he shoots her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Flo; I should have warned you that this part stings. I'm just going to clean up any dried blood that's left, and then I'll re-wrap it.”

“And then I can go?” 

Remus pauses, lowering the cotton swabs. They are flecked with blood like rusted iron, and he's only done one of her arms, but he catches the frown beneath her fringe. “Not quite,” he says gently. His heart aches as her eyes re-fill with tears and he leans forward to try and meet her gaze. "I—I know it can feel like you've lost all control when something like this happens. Especially when it doesn't go the way you anticipated and you end up here. But it's important to me to understand what you want to happen now, and what happened to bring you here in the first place. Do you think you can help me understand that?" 

He keeps his tone deliberately light and soft, remembering how overwhelming and distressing it had been for him when he was in her position, some thirty years ago now. The almost boredom of the practitioner assessing him had showered him in a self-loathing, the scent of which still clings to his skin even now. 

(And of course, things have shifted hugely with regards to language around mental health since that time, but they still haven't shifted enough when it comes to the less palatable side of things: the mess of a suicide attempt, the terror of psychosis, the stigma of a personality disorder. Remus remembers it all with a familiarity that means he's often the one picking up these kinds of presentations; he cannot bear the thought of another young person being met with the callousness he had received back then. Even now that he's stable and managing his symptoms, that shit leaves scars just as painful as the ones he can see on Flo’s wrists now. 

Flo whispers something, and Remus winces. His hearing has never been quite the same since long-COVID and he's finding himself straining more and more these days. "I'm sorry, Flo; I didn't catch that."

"I don't want you to section me," bursts out louder this time, and her eyes flood with tears at once. "I don't want to be locked away, please—”

"I don't want that for you either," Remus says smoothly. He reaches in the pocket of his scrubs and pulls out a fidget cube, then leans forward and gently tucks it into Flo's fingers. She stops peeling at her cuticles almost at once, frowning down at the cube.

"What—?"

"We are certainly not going to lock you up; we just want to keep you as safe as possible right now—" Flo makes a noise of distress, and Remus leans forward. "So in the interests of openness, I think it might be helpful for you to speak with the team on our acute psychiatric ward so that you can understand what your options are for recovery."

Flo ducks her head, shoulders trembling slightly and tears dripping from her cheeks into her lap, but she continues twisting the fidget cube and Remus can tell she is listening.

"Do you want to tell me a bit about what happened, Flo? You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, or if you've already been asked to speak about it, but I'm here if you want someone to just listen."

There's a long pause, and Remus listens to her shuddering breaths and aborted sobs as she fights for control over her breathing, but then she opens her mouth and begins. Her voice wobbles and shakes as she describes how her life has fallen to pieces over the last few months, how she is drowning in university work, how someone she had thought was a friend assaulted her and has left her body feeling entirely wrong—

And Remus listens. He doesn't ask questions, nor offer platitudes, but the more Flo's story pours out of her, the more her voice grows in strength, even as her energy drains. Remus can't help but feel that if only there was time to treat each mental health crisis presentation with the care and time it deserved, things might be a little different. And he gets that not all of his colleagues have the confidence or capacity to address these areas with empathy and directness, but they fucking should if they want to do this work. 

When Flo finishes, she offers a watery sort of smile. "Sorry I just yapped at you for so long."

"Don't be—thank you for trusting me with all of that."

Flo takes a shaky breath. "I… I will speak to someone from the psych team. If you think that would be good."

On cue, Emmeline from the Psych Ward pokes her head around the curtain. "Knock knock," she says brightly. "Florence Finnigan?" 

Flo nods cautiously, and Remus stands, his joints stiff. "I will leave you to it. Thank you, Flo, genuinely."

She gives a close-mouthed smile to her knees, then holds up his fidget cube. 

"Keep it," he says, hoping his smile is as soft and assured as she needs right now. "Keep it as a reminder of how brave and brilliant you've been."

With a pained sigh, Remus straightens and leaves the cubicle, wincing as his knees pop with the pressure. He hobbles to his office; his side is really starting to ache now from where he caught the cabinet. 

He's so tired that it feels like the early days of recovery following his stay in the ICU, where he had been desperate to return to work, to normalcy, to rebuild his strength. Only for his body to have very different ideas, leaving him completely exhausted and unable to sit up in bed for days at a time. Sirius had been endlessly patient with him: feeding him when he didn't have the energy to lift a fork to his mouth, holding him as he cried at the complete lack of taste that lasted for months and months, researching countless new hacks for him to try to tackle the chronic migraines. 

In truth, it's hardly surprising that his body changed so much over the last few years—the weight had clung to him as his body had fought to survive, and the depression that followed had seen him rely on food for comfort. 

And Remus doesn't like any of it, but especially the sensory discomfort of his waistband pinching at his stomach, the way his centre of gravity feels off all the time, how his thighs rub when he walks. He feels like he survived something that was supposed to kill him, and in doing so, was forced into an entirely new body—one that still doesn't feel like his after all this time.

The bang of the office door behind him snaps him out of his weight woes. It's a disaster as usual, and he hasn't cleaned up since that morning, meaning that the papers Sirius had disturbed are still laying scattered across the floor. Remus sighs and bends down to gather them up, and then—

There's a squeezing in his chest so rapid and so tight that Remus cannot breathe. It's like a pressure cuff has been snapped fast around his ribs and he can't draw a deep breath, can't move for the sudden heaviness in his body. He's vaguely aware of an unbearable nausea rising in his throat, of the pain radiating up his neck and across his shoulder—it's a horrid prickling weight that is just squeezing, clawing, burning.

Remus has no concept of how long it lasts (terrible doctor, he knows—that's the first thing he would be asking a patient presenting like this). It could have been hours or minutes or just a few seconds, but the squeezing is coupled with a dread so weighty that Remus truly believes he might die here in this shitty little office— 

All he knows is that when he surfaces, he's sweating and panting and exhausted to his very core. He's half-sprawled across the floor, one hand fisted in his scrubs and the other gripping the desk leg so tightly it has imprinted its edges into his palm.

Fuck.

Panic attack? It's been a few years since Remus has had a panic attack, and far longer since he's had one of that severity. Besides, his medication is supposed to ward off the worst that his brain is capable of, or at least, it has been until today. Or, maybe it's heartburn from eating all those protein bars whilst on the move today? Or perhaps a delayed injury from where he collapsed last night?

Remus frowns as he drags himself to standing, leaning heavily on the desk for support. He half expects another wave of dizziness or unbearable pressure when he straightens, but he's just met with fatigue.

He's fine. This is fine. 

It must have just been a panic attack, even though the symptoms don't fully align with what he's come to expect from his body. But he's had a crazy couple of days in terms of workload and the panic attack was just a response to the emotional load of his last patient when he was already over-tired and overwrought from the morning's conversation with Sirius.

He's fine. 

And then, all of a sudden, it's time to meet Sirius.

💉💊🩺

Sirius pulls out of the car park, enjoying the rhythmic click-clock of the indicator as he turns onto the dark main road. The headlights sweep over the pothole-ridden tarmac and Sirius mutters an apology at the way the car judders over the surface. 

It's practically unheard of for them to be leaving work at the same time, and Remus' quiet presence beside him is enough to quiet all the frustration and concern and anxiety that has been roiling in his gut all day. 

He chances a glance at Remus, biting his cheek to keep from grinning too broadly. His husband is slumped at a surely painful angle, with his seatbelt being all that's keeping him upright. Remus' eyes are closed and his forehead knocks lightly against the passenger window in time with the thrum of the engine. 

As if he can sense Sirius' gaze, Remus opens one eye and delivers an impressive one-eyed glower. “Eyes on the road,” he mumbles, but the words are swallowed by the colossal yawn that bursts forth. 

“Can't I admire how handsome my husband is, now that I'm seeing him stationary for the first time in days?” Sirius quips back. 

Remus lets out a sleepy snort. “Yes, I'm sure I'm looking my best right now.”

Sirius sneaks another glance, and this time the grin he's repressing is entirely too fond. 

Remus looks objectively terrible; his curls sit limp and greasy, his post-shift clothes are hugely overdue a wash, and the bags under his eyes consume practically half his cheeks. But he's still Remus—still has his dimpled half-smile, his smattering of freckles, and the most unique eyes Sirius has ever seen (sienna flecked with gold like a goddamn oil painting). He's still unfathomably kind despite a world that offered him anything but, still forever surprising Sirius with his quiet wit, still the love of his life and precious beyond measure. 

Fuck me, you're sappy tonight, says the Remus in his brain, and Sirius can't help but grin wider still. It's fucking true. 

Out there, Dr. Sirius Black has to be patient and measured and sharp, meeting the demands on him before the requests are fully formed, balancing empathy and expertise in an impossible tightrope of expectation—

In here, he gets to be soft and sweet with his husband, to admire the lines around Remus' mouth that are testament to how much they have laughed together.

It's an effort to pull himself back to the present and to Remus' earlier words. Sirius clears his throat. “I don't need your best,” he says quietly. “I just need you.”

With his eyes on the road, Sirius feels Remus' response more than anything: the gentle shift of his body towards Sirius', the subtle sigh of aching joints, and, at last, the clasp of calloused fingers over his own on the gearstick. 

“You melt,” Remus whispers, bringing their hands up to his chapped lips for a kiss.

Sirius’ heart squeezes at the tenderness of the motion; perhaps he should be embarrassed at his response to such easy affection after almost two decades of marriage, and yet. Remus has never once insinuated that Sirius' hidden softness was anything other than a precious gift, and it's a grace for which twenty-year-old Sirius hadn't known he was starving. 

They drive on, fingers tangled loose on the gearstick and no words needed. 

💉

Once they're home, they move around each other in the familiar dance of domesticity, even though Remus has scarcely been home enough to shower recently. 

Sirius finds near-constant excuses to touch Remus—a brush of their fingers as Remus passes the ingredients for dinner, or hooking his chin over Remus' shoulder as he stands at the hob, their torsos pressed together at every possible point. 

They don't talk about work, or that morning, or Remus' health, even as Sirius clocks that Remus' energy levels are beyond flagging. Instead, he steers Remus into a chair and feels his soft gaze on him as he finishes off the meal. Instead, he delights in Remus having seconds of the simple pasta dish and the groan of pleasure the first bite elicits. Instead, he leads his husband into a sleepy shower, soaping him down and scrubbing off the tang of antibacterial spray and hospital gowns. Remus is near boneless in his arms as Sirius works shampoo through his scalp, and barely even protests being burrito-wrapped in a towel, and then bundled into bed. 

"You look so fucking adorable right now," Sirius tells him fondly. Remus is tucked under the sheets, so cosy that only his face peeks out, all pink-cheeked and shower-softened. His damp hair fans around him like a halo, and Remus blinks up at him warmly.

Remus' sleepy smile is one of his all-time favourites—the soft vulnerability of it is entirely stripped of the masks Remus wears for the rest of the world, and it's a privilege for him to be witness to it.

Sirius speed-runs his own bedtime routine, skipping out several steps entirely, but then at last—at last—he has his arms around Remus' soft waist, and Remus' slow breaths against his neck. They'll get too hot in the night if they're wrapped up in each other, and will inevitably roll apart to cool down, but right now, Sirius is in his favourite place in the world and there's nothing that could taint that. 

Well.

That's not strictly true. 

Sirius takes a breath. "Is tomorrow a day off?" he murmurs, trying to keep his voice casual and light, even though his anticipation feels anything but. 

(He knows the answer; he has Remus' schedule memorised.)

Remus yawns, pressing his face into Sirius' chest with a sigh. "Technically, yes," he says, voice raspy with the edges of sleep. 

"Technically?"

There's a pause, and Remus sounds slightly more awake when he eventually speaks. "I'm not on the schedule. But…"

"But…?" Sirius prompts, when it becomes clear Remus has paused again.

"It's Tonks' first day back from mat leave," Remus says. "And I… I feel like I should be there."

Sirius frowns. "Tonks is more than capable, Moony. And McKinnon will be there to supervise if she has a wobble." 

"I know," Remus says, and there's still an unspoken but there. 

Sirius swallows, wrestling with the urge to push it, to remind Remus of the conversation they'd had that morning, and the desire for Remus to get the sleep he so blatantly needs. He still hasn't decided which when his brain makes the choice without him: "I don't want to fight again." His voice sounds so fucking small and pathetic in the dark, and he feels Remus stiffen against him slightly. 

There's a long pause, and then Remus sighs. It's a heavy, exhausted thing, the heat of it tickling the hairs on Sirius' chest. "Me neither," Remus says with a sadness that fucking devastates Sirius. He wraps his arms tighter around Remus, eyes suddenly hot and stinging. He's grateful for the darkness, for how much easier it is to utter these things without the weight of Remus' gaze on him. 

"Moony?" he says, and his voice is far steadier than he feels.

"Yeah?"

"I need you to stop pushing so hard. Please. I—I've missed you so fucking much—" And there is the voice crack, but now that he's started, he can't contain himself any longer: "I meant what I said earlier. I… I really don't need you to be superman. I don't need your best, or the brilliant Dr. Lupin, or any of that. This—here—" he presses a hard kiss to Remus' forehead, "—this is all I need. I just need my husband."

Remus sniffs, a wet, fragile little sound. But then Sirius feels him nodding.

"I love you," Remus says, and it sounds so fucking small and timid in the darkness, but it still lights Sirius up like a goddamn Christmas tree. 

"I love you," he tells him in return.

They drift off to sleep in one another's arms and in the glow of true vulnerability and understanding. 

It somehow makes it even more devastating when Sirius wakes up alone in the morning—again. 

💉💊🩺

By the second week of December, Remus is ready to pull an Ebeneezer Scrooge and ban Christmas and the whole stupid festive period. 

He's already banked some truly bizarre stories (the one con of having all his friends working in medicine too is that nothing shocks them anymore; there's no stunned silence when he announces someone stuck a dreidel up their arse. Or, sorry, slipped and fell onto it, as the patient in question had insisted), but most of them are just frustrating. 

At least three people have arrived following an electric shock from their over-the-top Christmas lights, and one fell off the roof whilst trying to balance an inflatable reindeer up there. Another popped a champagne cork right into their eye and promptly freaked out at the horror-movie way blood had trickled from their eyeballs and down their cheeks. There have been numerous hospitality staff whose managers have little respect for food safety standards, and have therefore sustained blistering burns from splashes of hot fat.

There are also the terribly sad cases: the rough sleeper with hypothermia who didn't have the funds for a shelter in minus-four-degree weather, or the victim of a drunk-driver who will never walk again. 

And that's on top of all the usual ailments that people present with—Remus is reaching deeper and deeper into his energy reserves, but they are simply not replenishing and he's already scraping along the bottom of the barrel. 

To make matters worse, Thursday mid-morning finds him doubled over in a quiet corridor, another panic attack (?) wringing him out like a sponge but no trigger to be found. One moment he was hurrying back from a consultation with Arthur in the Fracture Clinic, and the next, he's fucking dying, hands clawing at his chest in an effort to relieve some of the pressure that is ready to explode there.

Through the haze of the pain, as the burning sensation is beginning to siphon off, he's vaguely aware of someone calling his name—

"Remus? Oh my god, Remus?!"

A flash of auburn hair and Lily of all people is there. He's vaguely aware of her forcing his body into the recovery position, semi-reclined against the wall with his knees bent. The pressure on his shoulders from her iron grip helps a little, and she swims back into focus as the squeezing loosens, the concern in her eyes palpable. 

"Can you hear me?" she's saying, and Remus nods hastily. His tongue feels thick and clumsy in his mouth, his words slipping and sliding into one another in a jumble. "What?" Lily asks, and then her eyes widen. "Remus, I need you to raise your arm for me, now."

"M'not havin’ stroke," he manages, reaching up and trying to pat her cheek. His limbs are still not entirely his own, and his hand lands on her ear instead, but he catches the flash of relief in her eyes regardless. "S'panic attack."

She frowns. "Are you sure? Did something happen?"

Remus shakes his head, and though the motion throbs, he can feel himself returning at last. He runs a tentative hand down his chest, hovering over where he had been half-convinced he would explode Alien-style all over the hospital corridor. Ah well, at least he'd already be in the hospital—talk about efficiency!

"I'm okay," he tells Lily, who is looking more and more alarmed even as he tries to insist he's fine. 

"You are not fine, Remus Lupin. And Sirius will murder me if I let you pull another one of your antics—you are coming with me to be checked over right now." Lily supports him into a standing position. "Hell, I would murder me if I let something happen to you. Can you walk?"

"Lily, I'm fine—it was just a panic attack." His brain begins to whir back to life and his limbs are mostly steady underneath him once more. 

"You haven't had a panic attack like that in years, Remus. Especially not without a trigger. Come on," she takes his arm and begins marching them—albeit gently—down the corridor.

"No," Remus says sharply, pulling his arm out of Lily's grip. "I'm fine."

Lily pauses, eyes searching him. "What aren't you telling me?"

(That it's freaking me out that it's happened twice in a week now. That I'm sure it is a panic attack, except it doesn't feel quite right, and the possibility of it being something else scares me even more.)

And then Remus does the unthinkable: he lies. 

Remus hates lying. He hates how dishonesty sits coiled on his chest and tainting every other word that comes afterwards with its venom. He hates the anxiety of keeping track of a lie, even as it slithers bigger and bigger out in the world.

He doesn't lie; he bends the truth a little perhaps, he exaggerates that he is fine when he is possibly not completely fine, but he doesn't lie.

"It's my medication," he blurts out. "I forgot to get it refilled, and being off it has made me relapse a little. But I'm getting it back on track, Lils—I swear I'm fine."

(He doesn't even know why he's lying to her really, when he knows that she's only hounding him about this because she loves him, but that knowledge makes him itchy and frustrated in a way he can't begin to express.)

Lily has slowed to a stop, her lovely green eyes narrowed. "You promise?"

Fuck.

"Yes," he says, and the word comes out coated in poison. He watches in despair as Lily swallows it down with a trusting nod. 

"Okay. But Remus, if it's not getting better, I need you to promise you'll tell me. Or Sirius. Or James—or literally anyone—wait." Her eyes dart up and down him. "Sirius knows about this, right?"

Remus hesitates. He's so out of practice with lying that he truly cannot tell which is the correct response. The pause gives Lily the answer she needs, and she looks at him in disbelief. 

"Remus!"

He winces. 

Lily fishes her phone out of her purple scrubs with a sigh. "Unbelievable," she murmurs, tapping away at the screen.

"Wait—what are you doing?"

"Letting your husband know that I'm concerned about you," she doesn't look up from her typing, until Remus grabs her phone in a panic. "Hey—!"

"Wait!" he says, his voice oddly desperate. "Please don't—I will tell him. It will freak him out even more if he doesn't hear it from me."

Lily bites her lip, eyeing where he's clutching her phone. "I don't know, Remus. If he finds out I knew and didn't tell him—I'm still working on getting out of his bad books after the stunt you pulled the other week."

"Oh please, he adores you," Remus scoffs.  

"Flatterer," Lily says, but the corners of her mouth twitch up. 

"Please, Lils. Trust me on this?"

(Not that I deserve it.)

Lily sighs. "Okay, fine. But you have to actually tell him, Remus." 

"I will," he says. 

“In fact, I want you to text me when you’ve done it.”

“Okay.”

(He wishes he meant it.)

🩺

On the upside, he's seeing more of his friends than he ever usually does. Usually, they are so busy going about their days that they barely manage more than a nod as they pass one another in the corridors, but now, he suddenly has James dropping in to invite him to share his tiffin, and Alice bringing him proper coffee from the independent cafe down the road, and even Frank sneaking him outside for an illicit cigarette (what Sirius doesn't know can't hurt him).

Remus thinks Sirius is putting them up to it (with the exception of the smoking, obviously), and he's caught between annoyance at the implication he can't take care of himself, and the knowledge that he can't take care of himself.

Still, it's nice, if a little frustrating that everyone is right and it's easier to concentrate and function when he's actually eating and drinking regularly. 

It's also brilliant to have Tonks back in A&E. Between Remus, Tonks and Marlene, they make a formidable trio, despite the chronic under-staffing and high turnover. 

"You know, it won't all collapse if you stop for a second," Tonks tells him, a smile teasing their lips despite the bluntness of their words. (And that's the other thing Remus loves about being around Tonks; the sheer directness of being around a fellow neurodivergent person is refreshing and relieving). "We're not that incapable."

"I know!" Remus protests. "It's not about that."

"What's it about then? You just don't know how to stop?"

Remus swallows. "Something like that."

Tonks scrutinises him for a second, then grins broadly. "Nah, I reckon you just don't trust us to do a good enough job." He can tell they're teasing him, but it just doesn't feel funny to him. 

It certainly doesn't feel funny to admit to them that he knows he isn't essential to this whole operation, and the thought of that terrifies him, because he doesn't know who the hell he is without this.

💉💊🩺

So, Sirius might be abusing his cousin privileges a tiny bit. In that he's bribing Tonks to keep him posted on how Remus is doing, because after three days of good behaviour, Remus has slipped straight back into his horrible, self-destructive, workaholic habits.

The plus side: He has been reassured by how much more consistently Remus is remembering to eat—and eat properly, rather than what he can coax out of the shitty waiting room vending machines. He can see the difference in Remus after just a couple of weeks of this—he’s a little rounder, but his brain fog is also less overwhelming and his fatigue seems to overpower him less often. 

Even if the reason he is remembering to eat is because Sirius put out an SOS to their friends, he'll take it, damn it. It's also honestly a delight to be receiving so many messages from their mates about Remus being so fucking competent. Sirius knows his husband is brilliant, but he's also the last person in the world who would recognise that, and so Sirius hoards the messages like the body scrounging for glycogen: 

Tonks (10:40): ur hubby has eaten his breakfast 2 hrs late but still. he also saved a kid's life with appendicitis so ill let it slide

Prongs (12:01): Moony just removed a penny wedged in a 4 year old's nose and did a magic trick with it and now she is laughing her head off, i'm not crying you are

Prongs (12:02): He seems a little better this week? 

Charity B (19:04): Please tell Remus he did a beautiful job suturing Mr Fletcher's hand laceration. Mr Fletcher also complimented how calm he was throughout 😊

But also, the negative side: He is disgustingly jealous that Tonks gets to be around Remus all fucking day, gets to watch his clever hands at work as they perform CPR, gets to watch his face light up at the prospect of a puzzling presentation, gets to bask in the glow of Remus being Remus. 

So. Even though things are far from perfect, and are only barely good, Sirius thinks they may be settling at stable—and he'll take it.

But then comes Friday…

It starts normally. 

Sirius has had a relatively relaxed morning—he has dictated a series of overdue EMG reports to support with movement disorder diagnoses, and then following a cancellation, ploughed on to dictate a report on the electroencephalogram of a patient with a sleep disorder. 

His 9:30am appointment is a hospital recheck: a patient with Parkinson’s who Sirius has been working with for several years. The disease is well managed, aside from increasing difficulty walking due to weakness in his legs, and Sirius is able to persuade him to have a physical therapy referral after a few months of umming and ah-ing. 

Following this, he supports a doctor in their second year of placement in administering botulinum toxin for a patient suffering from chronic migraines. Alice drops in to request his opinion on an interesting client who presented to A&E the previous night—Mundungus Fletcher has been intermittently smelling a rotten odor that appears to be neurological in nature. He and Alice pore over the MRI reports to discuss a possible treatment plan, before he collects Lee Jordan, a promising resident doctor looking to specialise in Neurology, from A&E to accompany him on an appointment. Lee is a delight to have on board, and Sirius feels a surge of pride at the way he interprets Mr. Binns’ EMG—even more so at the professionalism and empathy he shows in delivering the likely MND diagnosis.

By the time they’re finished, it’s well past lunchtime, and Sirius treats Lee to the highest quality the hospital has to offer (cheese and pickle sandwiches in the canteen, with a side of soggy fries). He’s just settling back into work after completing a ward round, when his phone buzzes obnoxiously loudly on the desk.

Tonks (14:51): um. not to panic you but is Remus with you??

You (14:53): ?????

You (14:53): no?? why would he be?

You (14:55): tonks??? NOW i'm panicking wtf?

[Missed call to Tonks from You, 14:56]

You (14:55): CALL ME

Tonks (15:00): i said DON'T panic

Tonks (15:00): i'm sure it's FINE! but remus went on lunchbreak at 1 and he hasn't come back yet

You (15:00): TWO HOURS ago????

Tonks (15:01): and he doesn't have any meeting scheduled and he's not on any of the usual wards and he said he would only be 30 mins

Tonks (15:02): i'm sure it's fine but it's been TWO hours and you know it's painful getting him to even take 20 mins??

You (15:02): i'm coming down

Tonks (15:04): okay good. i know i said don't panic but i am panicking a LITTLE

[Missed call to Moony from You, 15:01]

[Missed call to Moony from You, 15:02]

[Voicemail left, 25 seconds]

You (15:05): SOS moony has gone MIA

Prongs (15:15): What?!!!

You (15:17): tonks says he never came back from lunch 

Prongs (15:18): Oh Jesus

Prongs (15:19): I'm stuck in a directorate meeting this afternoon shit. But I will get Lily to you asap and will be down as soon as I can get rid of Slughorn

Prongs (15:22): I realise that sounds like I'm planning to off him and for the court records I would like it known that I'm NOT

Prongs (15:22): Even if he's a royal pain in my arse

You (15:25): thank you

Prongs (15:27): It's gonna be okay Pads. BREATHE

You (15:29): trying :(

[Missed call to Moony from You, 15:27]

Lils (15:34): omw babe, hang tight

Frank (15:37): got all hands on deck R is missing??

Alice (15:38): Where did you run off to? Everything okay?

[Incoming call from Alice, 15:40]

Call duration: 3 minutes, 21 seconds

Marlene greets Sirius as he races through the emergency room doors, shoes squeaking on the plastic flooring. Even she—unflappable, grounded Marlene—has an anxious squint to her eyes, corners of her mouth pinching. That she has hardly been here more than a few months and is already clearly attached to Remus squeezes at Sirius' heart. He wishes he could bottle that knowledge like an antibiotic and use it to counter Remus' brain on his cruellest depression days.

"Have you found him?" he says, urgent and low. 

They need to be mindful; patients can pick up on the environment easier than an elderly immune system and the common cold, and Remus would be furious with them all for spreading uneasiness on his account if he knew. (Sirius would just like Remus here, to know that he is okay, fury be damned).

Even before the question is fully formed, even before Marlene shakes her head, Sirius sees the answer in her eyes, and his heart sinks. "Tonks is doing another sweep of the wards now," she says, voice clipped.

"Lily is just finishing ward rounds and said she'd come down to help," Sirius says, "and Alice said she would go up to Radiology to see if he's ended up engrossed in a scan or something. You know what he's like." He tries for a smile, but feels how his lips tremble at the motion.

Marlene catches it—of course she does; it's her whole job to notice these tiny details—and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "We'll find him, Dr. Black."

Sirius nods jerkily. "Frank is checking the staff areas, not that he normally uses them. But you never know.”

Marlene nods too, then hesitates. "Should we… Should I check the roof?" she says, her voice little more than a whisper. "Tonks said… well. Do you think..?"

Sirius' stomach drops.

Marlene watches his face and immediately backtracks. "I just—they said he used to go up there when he was struggling, and I—I'm sure it's not like that now, but…"

The 'but' hangs between them, thick and unwieldy. Sirius feels paralysed by its implications; where he had previously been having visions of Remus' blood sugar giving out on him again, or his long-COVID cloaking his brain in a nonsensical fog, now his mind is twisting ever darker.

It's been a long, long time since he's had to worry about Remus' mental health like that (and vice versa)—where he once had to consider high ledges and stockpiled tablets and sharp edges, where he had once had a fucking radar for Remus' slow deterioration into suicidal thoughts, things have changed. His current medication is working, goddammit. Even in the aftermath of the pandemic, when the fragile ashes of their mental states lay scattered on the hearth, they were able to sweep up the mess together, coax life back into those cooling embers, and heal. 

(Not enough to be able to talk about it. Not enough to be truly well again. But enough to cling together and claw their way out of the deep, dark hole that losing so many people had dug.)

As he had reflected earlier that week, things are far from perfect—far from good, even, on some days—but now Remus' depression tends to stretch a number of days instead of weeks or months. Nor has he hurt himself in years, no matter how loud the thoughts have been. And Sirius is so fucking proud of him for that; he really, really is. (Even if Sirius privately feels Remus' self-harm now takes the form of working himself ragged rather than anything else, he's doing better. Or so Sirius thought.)

But what if he's gotten complacent in his love? What if, after all this time, all these things he has been missing, Remus has been silently spiralling, unable to form the words to ask for help and begging Sirius to just see him.

The two of them have had so many nights on that roof, usually post harrowing shift, talking about anything except for how close they are to the edge of it all. 

And now—

"Sirius."

He jerks out of his head, launching himself back into reality with all the force of a defibrillator shock. Marlene is watching him with genuine worry furrowing her brow, hand at her side like she's about to page for backup. 

With Herculean effort, Sirius swallows down his panic. "I'll go check."

Marlene purses her lips. "I'll come with you."

"It's fine, I—"

"Respectfully, Black, I wasn't asking for permission."

Sirius stares at her a moment longer. He doesn't have the energy to argue with her; he just desperately, achingly, searingly wants Remus here, safe and sound and sane. His heart is already breaking at the thought of the conversation they'll have to have if his husband is up on the roof.

Finally, he gives a sharp nod. 

Remus' black-and-white thinking intensifies when he's in distress, and Sirius is already racing through his dusty inventory of re-regulatory steps, allowing Marlene to guide him swiftly through the hospital corridors towards the roof.

"Can I ask a question?" Marlene says out of nowhere, her words making him start back into his body. 

Sirius bites back the snappish response so often flung at him when he had been a wide-eyed resident doctor, desperate to learn all he could. You just did, boy, Dr. Moody had barked at him once. We don't have time to waste in here! Well. His prickly arse hadn't been given the name Mad-Eye for nothing. 

"Yes?" he says instead.

"You and Remus have been married for…?"

"Twenty-five years," Sirius supplies automatically. 

"What's it like, working in the same place as your partner?" 

Sirius doesn't know Marlene well, only really from Remus enthusing about what a fucking brilliant doctor she is, but he swears her voice goes a little shy, hair falling to hide her blush as she ducks her head.

(At times like this, a fucking nightmare, Sirius doesn't say. Infuriating, because I know exactly how much he is overworking. Upsetting because no matter what I do or who I rope in, I can't seem to get through, he doesn't say.)

(A gift, he also doesn't say. To be so in sync with the most important person in my life, to share in something we are so passionate about. To be able to hear how goddamn brilliant he is, how appreciated. To know that I only ever have to walk to A&E and he's there and I'm home—and how many people get to say that about a hospital?)

“Mixed,” he settles on at last. “I think it helps that we work in very different departments so we don't overlap a huge amount—we’d drive each other mad if we did. But it's also a real privilege. We just fit together and he understands me in a way that nobody else, not even James—Dr. Potter—can. It's very special to have that presence in the same building as me.” There's a pain in his throat and a tightness in his chest that have nothing to do with how fast they are striding.

Marlene casts him a side glance, her eyes a little shiny beneath her thick lashes and flick of eyeliner. “The way you talk about each other is very special, Black.” 

“He's very special,” Sirius says, his voice oddly croaky all of a sudden. He clears it awkwardly, palms a hand over his eyes, and glances back at her. “Why do you ask?” 

“My wife,” she says, “Dorcas.” Her mouth softens at the corners, and she tucks a reddish strand of hair behind one ear. “She's looking to come back to work—she had to take a break after COVID, and… well.” She licks her lips, “I'm biased, but I'm pretty sure she's the best damn neurosurgeon in the country.”

Sirius smiles despite himself. “Well. We are looking for one of those since Flitwick retired. You should tell her to apply.”

“You think?” 

“Yes. I'm always gonna back adding more queer power couples to this hospital.”

Marlene laughs, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “We are pretty fucking powerful.”

“And if Remus trusts you and your judgement, then so do I.”

Marlene blinks, soft and surprised. “Thank you,” she says quietly, then takes a half step ahead to steer around an approaching gurney. 

They fall quiet as they take a shortcut through the fourth floor. Unfortunately, this gives Sirius' brain full capacity to continue its aborted spiral.

Nobody, technically, is allowed up on the roof, but staff simply step over the cordoned-off section and squeeze through the gap between padlock and doorframe. Once through, there's a narrow walkway with just a flimsy railing overlooking the side of the hospital—and a 400ft drop over the hedge. 

Marlene leads them down a neglected corridor of the Endocrinology department, a floor below where they need to end up. The final floor, in a typical NHS accessibility fail, is stairs-only access, and Sirius represses a flinch as he thinks of how vehemently Remus has argued against this. 

He's following so closely to Marlene and yet is buried so deeply in his thoughts, that he doesn't notice when she freezes, slamming into the back of her and causing them both to stumble forwards. 

“Black, look—”

She's pointing down the corridor, at where a row of disused and broken hospital beds stand crooked against the wall. Curled up in one is an unmistakable tuft of tawny curls, and Sirius is running—

“Moony!” Sirius' voice crackles and echoes around the long corridor, fading just in time for Sirius to cup Remus' face in his hands. “Moony, thank fuck.”

Remus doesn't appear to be hurt at a glance. 

Sirius' hands automatically go to Remus' airways and to check his breathing. All appears… normal? Sirius brushes a hand over his body, searching for any telltale blood or contusions, but he seems to just be… asleep. 

Sure enough, Remus lets out an undignified little grunt of a snore, tucking his face against Sirius' palm with a sigh. 

And Sirius feels—

Insane. 

Remus has just been sleeping this entire time? Blissfully unaware of the sheer tsunami of panic and dread Sirius has been drowning in over the past hour? Asleep is a far cry from the twisted, horrifying scenarios his brain has been gleefully creating. 

(And Sirius is grateful, don't get him wrong. He would give up every last one of his organs if it meant Remus' brain wouldn't spiral into severe depression ever again.)

(But fucking hell.)

Sirius' brain suddenly feels impossibly loud and buzzing and furious. “McKinnon,” he says quietly, and Marlene starts from where she has been waiting uncertainly behind them. “Can you go and let the others know that we've found him and he's safe?”

He can't bring himself to meet her eyes, but he senses her swift nod, before her footsteps swish-clop into silence down the hallway. 

Which leaves Sirius staring at his sleeping husband, with anger and frustration and hurt and overwhelming, desperate concern flooding his body. He's suddenly so much more aware of his heart and its pounding in his ribcage, of a knot of nausea in his stomach as his non-essential systems are de-prioritised, of the surge of adrenaline and cortisol mingling in his bloodstream. 

(Fight or flight, his brain helpfully offers, and Sirius is fucking done with running from this conversation, with putting it off until he's managed to find the magic words that will get through to Remus' stubborn heart.)

(He's going to fucking fight. If Remus won't do it for his own well-being, then goddammit Sirius will.)

As if sensing his turmoil, Remus stirs at last, turning his face into Sirius' palm and blinking his eyes open blearily. "S'rius? What—" 

Remus squints around him, eyes taking in the dimly lit corridor, the rickety trolley, and finally, Sirius' stormy eyes. He sits up with a wince, belly pooling in his lap beneath his scrubs as he swings his legs to dangle over the side of the edge of the trolley. Remus is tall enough that his toes brush the floor—Sirius’ brain can't help but latch onto the strangest details despite his fury. 

“Hi,” Sirius says, only never has a single syllable contained so much hurt and confusion and worry and frustration and anger that it's seeping with it, bleeding into the silence around the word. 

Remus swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. “Are you… okay?”

Sirius inhales sharply. His scrubs suddenly feel tight around his neck, irritation flaring like anaphylaxis. “I don't know, Moony. Today, my cousin texted in a panic that nobody knew where you were and that you'd been missing for two fucking hours. I then raced down to A&E, alerted all of our friends, had the fucking devastating conversation with McKinnon, of all people, that you might be on the roof again—” 

His voice is getting louder and louder, but it's a runaway train, gobbling up his bottled-up pain as it speeds off. “—Which isn't even something I realised I had to worry about anymore, and that's fucking terrifying. And then I'm walking up here, planning to try and de-escalate the love of my life who I think is suicidal, only to find you fucking asleep, because—yet again—you won't fucking listen and stop!”

His breathing rattles out of him as he finishes, and as the silence settles once more, Sirius is painfully aware of how far his voice carries. (He can thank his god-awful father for those elocution lessons before boarding school—the same lessons that had corrected Regulus' stammer. After the lessons, it only ever emerged post-seizure, when Reg was a floppy, exhausted boy who just needed his brother.)

In the background, Sirius glimpses a nosy resident doctor poking their head round the corner to check out the noise. Upon seeing two heads of department in such a state, they retreat, eyes wide. 

He turns back to Remus. 

Remus' eyes are a little glassy, and he's blinking at Sirius' in exhausted confusion. There's a clump of sleep dust clinging to his left eyelashes, Sirius notices, once again honing in on all the wrong details. Remus swallows again, then speaks in a voice hoarse from sleep: “I don't—I didn't mean—”

“You never do, Moony, you never mean any harm by it, but still you keep hurting yourself, and I cannot bear it, Moony.” His voice cracks, volume crumbling with it, and Remus winces. 

“I'm not hurting myself, Sirius—I really was just tired. I—I don't know why Marlene would have brought up the roof—its not, I'm not—” His voice wobbles too, veering between a placation that boils Sirius' blood and a pleading that breaks his heart.

Sirius is suddenly very, very tired. 

“What am I supposed to think, Remus? How is it supposed to make me feel, Moony? That you'll sleep there but not here? In your own bed with your fucking husband?” His voice comes out flat this time, weariness weighty in every syllable. He waves a hand between them, ticking off his fingers as he goes: “You're never home. You've resorted to napping at work instead of in your own damned bed with your damned husband. You are addicted to being here and act like I'm being unreasonable if I want you to come home. You forget to eat except for the shit in the vending machines. Your fatigue is so bad that you forget your meds every single day. You're aching all the time, even if you won't admit it, and I feel like we haven't had a proper conversation without me nagging you in months. But it feels like if I don't fucking nag you, you're going to wind up in critical care again and I can't—”

Remus opens his mouth—whether in protest or self-defence or something else entirely, Sirius doesn't care—but Sirius beats him to it. “And worst of all, you don't even seem to care when I call you out on this.”

“I do care,” Remus snaps, the edge in his voice telling Sirius that he's finally hit a nerve. Of course he has; one of Remus' biggest insecurities is of being seen as the stereotypical unfeeling, uncaring autistic—even though he's the furthest thing from that, even though he's the most empathetic person Sirius knows, even though that is just a hideous and ableist stereotype. “I—” he seems torn for a moment, and in the pause, a tension swells between them. 

This, Sirius realises, is the crux of whatever the hell is going on with his husband, and he's teetering on the edge of finally sharing it. 

And then, just as fast, the moment deflates, Remus looks away, and Sirius feels like Remus' reticence has taken a chisel to Sirius’ heart. 

“I care so much that it sometimes feels like it's destroying me,” Remus says at last.

“I know,” Sirius says softly. He reaches out to snag Remus' fingers where they're anxiously tearing at the skin around his nails, clasping them gently between his palms instead. 

Remus lets him, wet eyes following Sirius' movements with a sort of hopeless exhaustion. 

“I know you do,” Sirius continues. “All I'm asking is… please do not make me watch you destroy yourself. I cannot lose you.”

There's a hysterical bite—dramatic, his cunt of a mother would have called it—to his voice now, but the words at last seem to be landing. Sirius feels like a monster for the flush of relief when he catches Remus' lower lip trembling. It is a relief to know his husband might finally be hearing him, might finally understand him—and also an unbearable sadness to have triggered this in him. 

There's another moment of tension, the ringing truth of all that Sirius has shared thrumming between them.

Remus' mouth opens and closes, eyes flitting frantically between Sirius' own. In this light, the gold flecks in his irises glow like globules of amber. Sirius can tell he's frantically sorting through how to respond, trying to process all of it—and ordinarily, Sirius would have been more mindful of this, but he can't help himself the longer the silence stretches on. 

“I just… We talked about this, Moony. I thought you had understood.”

Remus swallows again, takes a deeper breath. “I—I was just tired, Sirius. I'm sorry, I just—I just meant to lie down for a nap, somewhere out of the way; I didn't mean to scare you like this. My brain was really foggy and I don’t know why I didn't tell Tonks or Marlene, I just—I’m sorry.”

Sirius closes his eyes as his frustration threatens to choke him once more. “Is that… is that all you have to say?” He hates how wobbly it comes out, as if his resolve has once more sagged in the face of Remus' sad eyes. 

Remus blinks. “Sirius, I—” He reaches a hand out to cup Sirius’ cheek, but Sirius takes an instinctive step back, pulling their hands apart with the motion. He can't even place why, and the guilty nausea in his belly coils tighter—and tighter still as he watches the hurt flash through Remus' eyes. 

“Let's finish this at home,” Sirius says. “I've made enough of a scene at work for one day, I think.”

Remus ducks his head, swiping his wrist over his eyes with a muffled sniff. “When do you finish?” 

“Now,” Sirius says—not technically the truth, but he knows Alice will cover for him, angel that she is. 

Remus looks up sharply. “Oh. I—”

“You're done too.”

“Sirius—”

“Pretty sure falling asleep at work like this would warrant at least a review with HR.” 

Remus stares at him, eyes flitting from sadness to hurt to fury. “Fine,” he hisses. “We'll continue this at home.”

He stumbles slightly as he steps off the bed, but stalks away too quickly for Sirius to steady him. Sirius sucks in a breath and then follows. 

💉

After a silent lift ride, it's almost a relief to be surrounded by the chaos of lower-floor hospital life. In the changing rooms, they head to opposite sides of the room to don their everyday wear, adding their used scrubs to the towering laundry heap. 

Sirius sneaks a glance over his shoulder, wincing at the tightness of Remus' shoulders, before they disappear under a thick green jumper.

They wordlessly meet at the door and run straight into Lily, who is anxiously hovering just behind it. 

“Remus, thank God—are you alright?”

Remus nods and murmurs something Sirius doesn't catch from his position behind him. 

“Are you sure?” Lily presses the back of her hand against Remus forehead, squeezing his arm. “Marlene said you were upstairs but she didn't—”

“I'm fine, Lily,” Remus tells her, gently pushing her hand away, but she doesn't seem placated in the slightest. Instead, her agate eyes narrow as she takes him in. 

“Was it another panic attack?” 

Sirius flinches, the words stopping him in his tracks. He turns slowly to look at Remus, whose face—the face he loves with everything in his being, his very sunrise and sunset—is suddenly saturated with shame, eyes closed. “You've been having panic attacks?”

His voice sounds oddly faint, but even with how weak it comes out, Remus cringes from it like he's yelled. 

Lily has also stilled, eyes darting between them. “Remus. You told me you were going to tell him—you told me you did tell him—I don't—”

“We're going home,” Remus says firmly. He opens his eyes and his face wipes free of guilt. His words cut off both Lily's confused and wounded wondering and Sirius' utter lostness. 

“But—” Lily starts.

“I'll call you later,” Remus says, pushing past her. 

He grabs Sirius' wrist to drag him along too, and Sirius goes because he doesn't know what the hell else to do. 

He's never once doubted that he knows his husband, that he understands in theory how his brain works even if he wishes it would be kinder to Remus. But now, in the light of all of this, it's like he's tethered himself to a stranger. 

💉💊🩺

The door slams shut behind them, and Remus braces himself for what comes next—though in truth, this is what he's been doing the whole drive home, his mind a fucking mess.

He's experiencing a bizarre sort of pride in how far they've come that they're dealing with this like adults, rather than running away from it like they (he) once would have. At the same time, he feels fucking furious: at himself for having a brain unable to process what Sirius is saying like a “normal person” (even more so at himself for having such an ableist perspective, despite his efforts to undo this), at Sirius for not being more cognizant of this, at himself again for needing that, at the perpetual brain fog that never seems to fucking lift these days—

(Remus hates being angry—he hates the buzzing ache that fills his limbs and how utterly unbearable it is to contain it in his body. It makes him want to scream and kick and sob in a way that he hasn't gotten away with since he was about five years old. Instead, he's expected to self-regulate like his chest isn't on fire, like his hands aren't fizzing with frenetic energy.)

(Anger makes him feel bad, and Remus tries so, so fucking hard to be good.) 

Remus wishes he could remember what on earth he'd been thinking in going up to practically the roof after all this time. Because he gets why Sirius had reacted that way—hell, he would have been the same if it had looked like Sirius' suicidal ideation had re-emerged from the depths of the life they've built together. He can only remember the exhaustion on a cellular level, the incessant need to not worry anyone (which, fucking brilliant how that turned out). 

Further back that morning, he can remember the young woman who had presented with excruciating menstrual pain, who had been forced to sit and wait for three hours before they got to her. He remembers ordering the laparoscopy and diagnosing the stage three endometriosis that should have been handled by the Gynaecology team instead of A&E if only that department weren't already flooded and underfunded. He remembers the gratitude in her eyes as she'd wept about trying to get this diagnosis for seven years and being driven to the point of severe depression by the constant pain. 

He remembers diagnosing and starting treatment for pneumonia in an elderly woman, the panic in her daughter's eyes as they battled to find her a free bed. The paralytic teenager whose stomach needed pumping following a night of heavy drinking. The fight to stabilise a man with sepsis running in his bloodstream. The woman whose migraines were so severe she couldn't move from her hunched position in the waiting room chair, forcing triage right there. He remembers ordering blood tests, CAT scans, MRIs, an X-ray, an emergency referral to the oncology ward. He remembers supporting the resident doctors with a resuscitation, prioritising the victims of a traffic accident, with the complication of an interpreter for the Syrian asylum seeker whose ankle had broken on the black ice of the early hours. 

He remembers the elderly man who hadn't made it following a huge heart attack—who, realistically, was already gone when he reached them in the ambulance, and to whose relatives Remus had been forced to break the tragic news. 

All of their faces and conditions come back to him one after another. It had felt endless; nothing ever stops in A&E and there are always more and more and more—and so he didn't stop either. But everything after that is shrouded in the murk of his brain fog. 

Sirius toes his shoes off with a grunt, dropping the car keys on the side table. Remus watches him press the heels of his hands briefly into his eye sockets, then let out a heavy exhale. “Okay.” 

Sirius’ hands lower, and it's like Remus' ribcage is puncturing his lungs to see that Sirius’ eyes are glittering once more with unshed tears. Like his lungs are filling with blood to understand that he is the cause of such a reaction. Why can't he just stop hurting people? It dampens his anger with the kind of efficiency his parents would have killed for mid-meltdown.

Sirius backs up till he's leaning against their knackered old sofa, and then looks across at Remus, still by the door. Remus feels a little like a Sim awaiting instructions on how to respond, but at Sirius' stare, he moves to stand opposite Sirius. 

Sirius lets out a sigh. “Please, sit down, Moony.”

Remus blinks. He is exhausted, as always these days, and he shoves aside the familiar frustrated beat that sounds every time someone else tries to judge his own limits. 

(It's even more of a pain that Sirius is almost always correct.)

Remus sinks into the armchair just to his left, feeling Sirius' eyes tracking his movements. He can't help the tiny groan of relief as the weight is taken off his aching knees, though it's mixed with the sensory discomfort of his waistband tightening. 

The silence stretches between them like the frailest tendrils of blood vessels beneath a steady scalpel. Remus fixes his eyes on his knees, because even having Sirius' face in his periphery makes him feel like he's fucking drowning. 

“Do you want to start or shall I?” Sirius says, his voice weirdly cordial and level. 

And just like that, the blood vessel tension between them bursts. 

“I was under the impression that you were going to pick up where we left off.” Remus tries to match Sirius' cool tone, but it comes out too flat and robotic. 

Sirius exhales. “I wasn't sure if you'd had time to process some of what I said and wanted to respond.”

Remus swallows. “I wouldn't know where to start.”

Something clenches in Sirius' jaw. “Fine,” he says. “I'll go. What else have you been hiding from me? Since everyone else apparently gets to know your medical history before I do?”

Remus bristles. “First of all, no one, not even you, is entitled to my medical history.” 

It's the wrong response, true as it may be, and Sirius recoils like he's been slapped. “I'm your husband,” he says quietly. “I thought I'd be the first person you'd tell if your panic attacks had come back. I know Lily's one of your closest friends, but Moony—you’re my best friend.”

Remus swallows again, the guilt rising in his throat like bile. It burns just as fiercely on the way back down, settling heavy in his gut. “And you're mine,” he says quietly. 

Sirius takes a breath that rattles in his throat. “So then why didn't you tell me?” Sirius asks quietly. He's trying, Remus can tell, voice straining to contain the hurt he's really feeling. 

Remus closes his eyes briefly, forcing himself to make eye contact when he opens them. “I—I was trying not to worry you.”

Sirius stares at him, his expression almost… shocked? Remus wets his lips—perhaps he wasn't being clear enough? “I just mean. You've spent so much time worrying about me over the last few years—after COVID, and then my diagnosis, and before that with my mental health stuff. And—and there's all the food stuff and my weight. And I saw how you were after the blood sugar thing the other week—I know you, Padfoot, you don't need to worry about me any more than you already do. It's already too much. I'm f—”

“Moony, so help me God, but if you finish that sentence with ‘fine,’ I will scream.”

Remus clamps his mouth shut, unsure where all those words had suddenly bubbled from. They were all true, but they weren't ever supposed to see the light of day, and—

Sirius makes a tiny, broken sound, and it's the worst fucking thing Remus has ever heard. He makes to stand to wrap Sirius in his arms, but Sirius beats him to it, crashing to his knees in front of Remus, slotting himself between Remus' thighs. His face tilts up to look at Remus, his eyes wet and wild and wrecked, one hand coming up to hold his cheek, the other squeezing gently at his love handle. 

“Moony, my love.” Even his voice is uneven. “It is my greatest privilege to worry about you—” His voice cracks and he ducks his head. “You have no idea how precious it is to be the person who gets to love you like that. Whatever your brain is telling you, whatever you're thinking, it's not… it could never be too much; you are not too much. You're mine, and I love you. In sickness and in health, remember?”

Remus blinks around his own tears, one hand flying up to cover his eyes as the need to sob becomes almost irrepressible. He wants to believe Sirius with every part of himself, but he's so fucking sick of himself. Of putting Sirius through that stay in the ICU and the agonising—and ongoing—road to recovery as they both had to adjust to his new limitations. Of how frustrated and snappy Remus was in trying to learn to accept more help. Of how anxious and overbearing Sirius became in response to him being so unwell. Of the years of trying different medications and treatments and devising safety plans that just made him feel like such a fucking burden. Of the way he's ballooned in the last few years and the way he constantly needs reassurance he doesn't really believe that Sirius is still attracted to him. He's sick of all of it.

It feels almost impossible that Sirius isn't sick of it too. 

Almost, though—not totally. 

Huh. 

That's… something. 

It feels a little like hope. Because Sirius is still here and he's telling him that he wants this. Wants Remus, with all his mess and complications. 

But it's not just Sirius—his friends check in with him all the time and see through most of his brush-offs. Lily has already messaged twice to remind him to call her later. Marlene had offered to cover his shifts the following couple of days to give him time to rest. 

And though none of those things sit well, though he's almost entirely sure he doesn't deserve their seemingly endless love, there's that almost word again.

He lowers a hand, realising it's trembling as he does so. Sirius is still there, watching him with such a broken-open expression of vulnerability that it feels like Remus has him on the operating table. 

“Hi,” Sirius says quietly. He tucks one of Remus' curls behind his ear with a near unbearable tenderness, and leans in for a gentle kiss. “I'm so sorry it took me so long to say all of that. I'm sorry I didn't see this sooner—see you sooner.”

“Please don't apologise.” Remus' voice comes out husky and teary. “S’not like I wanted you to see.”

“Can you tell me about them now? The… panic attacks? Or any of it—I just. I want to understand.”

Remus doesn't want to tell Sirius that it's happened another two times this week and that scares him shitless. He doesn't want to tell Sirius that the more it happens, the more he knows that these aren't panic attacks—frankly, he's too good of a doctor not to know that. He doesn't want to tell Sirius that, despite this knowledge, it doesn't feel important enough to act on his concerns when there are so, so many people to help. 

He doesn't want to tell him that the only time he feels like himself is when he's working, and that without having that to focus on, he's completely overwhelmed all the fucking time.

But he takes a breath, chances another glance at Sirius. His husband's eyes are so open and encouraging and loving that even Remus' brain can't twist it. Remus hadn't known how warm grey could feel before Sirius but it's like being bathed in the cosiest steam. 

“Can we… Can we have a bath? It feels easier that way.”

Sirius smiles at once, and it feels like taking a full breath for the first time all day. “Of course, Moony. I'd love that.” He leans in to drop another kiss to Remus' lips, before making to stand. “You might have to give my poor knees a minute though, Christ.”

🩺

It is easier in the bath in some ways, harder in others. They're two tall men, and the bath is not really built to contain them, but Sirius arranges them in the steaming water so that Remus is tucked between Sirius' legs, his back flush against Sirius' chest. 

Sirius listens as Remus talks, and it pours out of him, as if the way Sirius is massaging soap into his skin is drawing the truth out of his pores. Once he's finished his ministrations and rinses the soap suds from his skin, he hooks his chin over Remus' shoulder, his hands clasped over the apex of Remus' belly. 

Remus can feel Sirius' heartbeat against his back, steady and strong and his. Its rhythm gives him the courage to keep going, even when his voice cracks or when he can feel Sirius' sharp inhale. By the end, the only thing he hasn't shared are his suspicions about the panic attacks. He's not entirely sure why, only that when he reaches for them, the words are simply not there. 

The silence when he finally stops talking feels far less overwhelming than he had feared. It actually just feels safe.

He feels safe. Safe and so much lighter to know that Sirius is going to help him shoulder this—that he's probably already devising a plan. Where that would have felt overwhelming and annoying before, now Remus is only overwhelmed by how much he needs someone else to take the reins for a while. 

“I love you,” is the first thing Sirius whispers, his breath tickling the damp skin of Remus' neck. “Thank you, Moony.”

“Love you too,” Remus mumbles. 

“How are you feeling now?”

Remus half-shrugs, water sloshing at the motion. “Tired. Fuzzy? But also… a little better, I think.”

Sirius kisses a line down his neck, lingering on the soft flesh beneath his chin. “I have some suggestions,” he says, and Remus smiles wryly. 

“Of course you do.”

Sirius pinches Remus' belly gently. “Cheeky. You don't have to make any decisions right now, but I also want you to know that you're not dealing with this on your own anymore. I won't allow it.” He raises a wet hand and gently wipes under Remus' eyes, where salty tear tracks are drying tight and uncomfortable. The tenderness of the motion almost makes Sirius' gesture moot. 

“Okay.”

The confidence of Sirius' voice soothes something in Remus' very soul as he continues: “For tonight, I'm going to make us some dinner and then you can call Lily if you're up to it. And then I think we should go to bed and cuddle.”

“I like this plan,” Remus says quietly, and Sirius chuckles. 

“As for tomorrow—I think it would be a really, really good idea to take tomorrow off. Marlene has already offered to cover your shift, and it would be helpful to be able to work out our next steps together.”

“I'll think about it.” His voice is raspy and honestly, the thought of work tomorrow when he feels so wrung out and heavy makes him want to cry, but he means it. 

“And—this is the only thing I'm not willing to negotiate on, we're making you an emergency GP appointment to get you checked over.”

“Ugh, do we have to?” Remus groans, tipping his head back into Sirius' chest. 

“Yes,” Sirius says. “You're lucky I'm not calling 111 tonight.” 

“He's just going to tell me to lose the gut; that seems to be his answer for everything.”

Sirius' hand still where it has been absently circling Remus' belly button. “You never told me that.”

Remus flushes. “Well. It's kind of embarrassing to have another doctor tell you that your BMI makes you obese and that you should lose weight if you want to feel better.”

“What. The fuck.” Sirius' voice is cold and sharp, his grip tightening on Remus’ hip. “Remus, that's not embarrassing, that's—that’s fucked up. He should never have said that, he's—”

“He's not wrong, Padfoot. We're doctors; you can’t tell me you wouldn’t be saying the same if a client like me presented with—”

“He is wrong, Moony—” Sirius says hotly. “He—you would never say that to anyone who walked into A&E, especially not without running a whole set of tests and knowing their family history. Fat sits differently on everyone, you know that. Fat doesn't give a shit about genetics. He doesn't get to give you a hard time because of the clothing size you wear.” He sits up straighter in the tub, pressing a fierce kiss to Remus' temple. 

“BMI is fucking bullshit—that has been proven time and time again—and it's unacceptable that he's perpetuating that. I'm going to write a complaint.”

“Please don't—it’s fine, Sirius. I obviously haven't been taking his advice.” Remus pokes his belly ruefully, and Sirius runs a protective hand over the whole teardrop sweep of his stomach. 

“Oi, no. Don't do that. You should never have had to hear it in the first place. You are gorgeous and I fucking love you like this.”

Remus pulls a face. His cheeks feel hot and his eyes are burning again in something like humiliation for even bringing this up. 

“Hey. No, don't do that, no faces.” Sirius pulls him into a tighter hold. “Firstly, if we have to pick between you having a bit of a belly, and you being that poorly again, the tum wins every fucking time. Secondly, and for what it's worth, I love it—my dick loves it—”

His earnestness startles a laugh out of Remus, and, as Sirius shifts, he feels the unmistakable stretch of his dick twitch against the curve of Remus' arse.

“—And we're going to request you see a different doctor.”

Remus twists as best as he can in the narrow tub, pressing a kiss to Sirius’ lips, imbuing it with his own gratitude, his love, his everything—all that feels too big and beautiful to be confirmed in mere words. He's missed this so much, this intimacy with Sirius, this all-encompassing and precious pleasure that's all them. 

(It's your fault you've been missing this, he reminds himself, because he can't seem to allow himself to have a Nice Thing without at least a little self-flagellation. But then Sirius does something with his tongue that completely obliterates that thought, and he's back to the delicious, floaty joy.)

Sirius responds enthusiastically, his dick hardening between them as the kiss deepens, his hands tracing Remus' shape with a near reverence. 

It could be hours, it could be minutes, but Sirius is panting as he finally pulls away. “I've missed this. You. Us.”

“Me too,” Remus says, only his voice comes out embarrassingly dreamy. 

“You doing okay?” Sirius asks, his hand coming back up to cup Remus' cheek. 

“Extremely.”

Sirius laughs, a rich, warm sound that rumbles through Remus' entire body. He's so fucking pretty, with his lovely eyes and bright smile. His hair is only just starting to turn grey, so that he has silvery streaks amongst the black, and his wrinkles and creases are far less pronounced that Remus', his jawline and cheekbones far sharper. 

He's gorgeous, even more than when they met, more than their wedding day, because the wear of his face is testament to the life they've lived together.

They get dried off together, stealing kisses and offering up murmured praise, until Remus finds himself tucked up beneath a blanket on the sofa. Sirius potters around the kitchen behind him, humming softly to himself, as the sumptuous smell of onions and garlic basking together fills the room. From there, it's a sizzle of tomatoes joining the pan, a glug of olive oil, and a heaped teaspoon of comforting herbs. 

“You should message Lily,” Sirius says gently. Remus sighs but does so, unlocking his phone to find a whole stack of notifications from his friends. He responds to them each in turn, forcing himself to allow their love and concern instead of focusing on his own self-loathing, and it helps a little. Lily responds almost at once to his message, and they agree to call the following day. 

Sirius presents him with a large bowl of pasta drenched in the simple tomato sauce, a handful of peas and florets of broccoli, and a generous dollop of cheese on top. 

It's sensational, and Remus lets out a happy groan around his first bite. “Thank you,” he tells Sirius, though a mouthful of pasta, and Sirius beams, dropping a kiss on the crown of Remus' head. 

Remus eats until he's pleasantly heavy, sighing contentedly as he lies across Sirius' lap. Sirius' palm rests gently on his belly, and for the first time in months, Remus shoves aside the urge to suck in. 

He's happy, he realises, which feels impossible given how the day had started and the emotional turmoil of their conversation earlier. But it's undeniable; the warm glow in his stomach, how quiet the doubting voices are in his mind, the sight of his husband shooting him soft little smiles every time their eyes meet. 

He's happy and that's his final thought as sleep claims him that night. 

💉💊🩺

It's the sound that wakes him in the cool light of early morning. 

The winter chill has set into their bedroom and half of Sirius' body is exposed to it (Remus: his favourite blanket hog), and he thinks for a moment it's this that woke him, but no—

There's an awful keening pant coming from his left, and Sirius’ neck snaps towards it so fast that his muscles twinge in protest. His sleep-crusted eyes struggle to focus for a second, and even when they do, the image is fuzzy around the edges like it always is now that he’s in his fifties. Which means that it takes a moment for his brain to catch up with his vision, to connect that horrible, gasping sound with the love of his life, sprawled across their bedroom floor. 

Remus' face is taut with pain, pale, with pinpricks of sweat on his forehead. His eyes are frantic, searching, pupils blown wide in the half-light, his jaw clenching tight around each laboured breath. It’s the clawing motion at his chest that wracks a full-bodied shudder through Sirius—how many times has he seen someone struggling for breath like this in the hospital, clutching at their chest, paralysed and pale with pain? Remus’ limbs are arranged all wrong around him, his right leg at an angle and his other arm trapped beneath his heaving torso.

It’s Sirius’ worst nightmare.

(Literally. He used to have dreams like this every fucking night following Remus’ stay in intensive care, with his brain puppeteering countless hideous ways for Sirius to lose him. For one hideous moment, Sirius is desperate for his mind to warp this into something blatantly dream-esque instead of the cold, hard reality.)

There is a split second where Sirius freezes, utterly paralysed by the sight before him. It's a second that will haunt him for the rest of his days—a reminder that no matter how good he is under pressure, no matter how capable, his hesitation here, where it matters more than anything, could have killed the love of his life. 

“Remus!”

It comes out as a yell, a sound just as ragged as the breaths Remus is forcing through overworked lungs. Sirius is out of bed, dropping to his knees beside Remus with a loud thump! “Moony, oh fuck, oh fuck—” 

His hands scramble for Remus' wrist, finger tight on his radial pulse. It beats hard and fast beneath Sirius' grip, and he winces. He's tachy as hell. 

Sirius' hands are already scrabbling for his phone, dialling 999 and cramming his phone against his ear as he waits for the familiar tone. At the same time, Remus lets out a little groan of distress, sagging into Sirius and fisting a hand in his ratty sleep shirt. “S’rius—” he manages, tears prickling in his eyes. 

The sight of him in tears sends Sirius' entire encyclopaedic knowledge of first aid out of the goddamn window. He wants to fucking scream and cry and kill whatever deity is responsible for the hand it's dealt Remus Lupin, but he can't waste time on any of that. Every second is precious, every passing moment makes him breathless with panic, but he cannot allow it even a fraction of space in his chest—

“Emergency, do you need police, fire or ambulance services?”

It's a cool, calm voice, and it's jarring as hell to Sirius’ frantic brain. 

“Ambulance,” his voice comes out wobbly and afraid. It takes a mammoth effort to wrestle Remus upright, especially with his limbs taut and heavy, but he manages to pull him against the wall.

"What is the address of the emergency?" 

Sirius rattles off their address as he bends Remus' knees a little—he can feel Remus trying to help as his knees shake, can see him straining to hold the position as Sirius almost trips over himself in his desperation to grab pillows off the bed. On the phone, the handler is asking him to explain the situation, and Sirius cuts her off before she's even finished: 

“Code blue. 55-year-old male, acute chest pain, suspected heart attack.” His voice wobbles on the last two words, but he ploughs on. “Unknown when pain began but episode has lasted at least two minutes. Patient appears to have collapsed after getting out of bed—no apparent injuries. Heart rate is tachycardic. Patient is awake and breathing, but breathing is significantly impaired.” 

He tucks the pillows under Remus' legs, running his palm over Remus' sweaty cheek. “You're okay,” he tells Remus, though Sirius' own fingers are trembling. 

“H’rts,” Remus manages, though the effort of speaking seems to wipe him out further and he slumps sideways slightly. 

“I know, baby—” Sirius' voice cracks, and he takes a second to press the phone to his forehead and blink through his tears. The handler is giving him instructions that he has already enacted—check his airways, sit him upright, monitor his breathing, and Sirius cannot bear her calmness when Remus is becoming paler by the second. Remus' fingernails have left deep pink scrapes on the soft skin over his breastbone, as if breaking the surface will loosen the constriction in his heart. Sirius forces his fingers between Remus' clawing motion, squeezing as tightly as he can. “I've got you, love. I'm here.”

They don't have any aspirin in the house, Sirius has to confess to the handler when she asks. He feels like the worst medical professional in the world when he admits that he also doesn't know where the nearest defibrillator might be. 

(Please, God, don't let them need it. Sirius will do anything not to need it.)

All the while, Remus' pants grow weaker and weaker as he slumps against Sirius, eyelids fluttering closed. “M’so—dizzy—” he gasps, and then his eyelids close and refuse to blink open, no matter how hard and frantic Sirius' sobs. His breathing turns shallow and raspy in unconsciousness, his mouth slack around it. 

“Wake up,” Sirius begs his husband's lifeless—don’t fucking say lifeless—form. Sirius drops the phone entirely as he uses both hands to seek Remus' radial and carotid pulse points—as if pressing them both in the right way will shock Remus back to him. The beating beneath his fingertips is rapid and irregular but it is still beating, and the realisation only makes him cry harder. “Moony, please, please wake up—”

In the distance, he hears the unmistakable sound of an ambulance siren, growing louder and louder as it speeds towards them. He knows that technically this is far quicker than they could expect, that they're fucking lucky it has arrived so quickly, but it’s still not quick enough when it feels like Remus and his thready pulse are slipping away, no matter how hard Sirius is trying to coax them into staying. Sirius can't bear to leave Remus slumped on the floor, despises himself for needing to step away for even a second to unlock the door to the paramedics, for not reacting faster, for not forcing Remus to fucking stop before any of this could have happened. 

The paramedics are efficient and capable, speaking to Sirius with a clinical edge that just allows him to cling to his sanity. He's grateful for the technical questions—the detachment from the ‘patient’ being his fucking soulmate feels like a lifeline. “I'm a doctor, we’re both doctors,” he says at least three times, as if this will be their saving grace, as if the fucking heart attack will turn around and say: Oh! Doctors, you say? So sorry, my mistake; I'll be off then!

Within minutes, Remus has been bundled into the back of the ambulance, Sirius perched on the edge of the trolley, filling the remainder of the space in the vehicle with his panic and impatience. He watches hawkishly as the lead paramedic straps Remus' in for an ECG, eyes fixed on the too-fast rise and fall of his stomach. At the same time, the second paramedic is administering the anticoagulant, and Remus lets out a tiny hiss as the needle sinks into his arm. There are scratch marks there, too; some are rubbed red raw and oozing, and the sight of them brings fresh tears to Sirius' eyes. 

He blinks hard as the ambulance swings out of their road, heading straight for their hospital. Remus will hate that, Sirius thinks, almost hysterical at the thought of it, the embarrassment of the hospital’s very own Head of A&E himself having a significant medical incident.

The paramedic—Sirius had forgotten their names the moment they had introduced themselves, all thoughts emptying that weren't Remus, Remus, Remus—is studying the ECG results with a frown. 

“The results are suggesting an angina attack,” he says evenly, and Sirius almost vaults over the trolley to join him. He ignores the other paramedic’s protest (“Dr. Black, you must sit down whilst the vehicle is moving—”) and stares at the screen. 

Sure enough, the ST-segment is depressed instead of elevated, the T-waves inverted. “Transient ischemia,” Sirius murmurs, and whilst this is still not good, whilst he still wants to hold Remus tight and cry, it is significantly better than the results he had been dreading. Angina, if they are correct, is serious, is an indicator of something far more sinister, but it has been caught, and that's everything to Sirius. 

The worry is still choking him up and spitting out his ruined carcass, but he is now able to see an after—he is going to get an after with Remus. 

“BP is collapsing,” the other paramedic says, and Sirius snaps back to him. “I'm administering the glyceryl trinitrate. Oxygen sat is also dropped to 85—starting him on oxygen.”

“Your husband doesn't have a history of cardiac incidents?” The first paramedic asks, and Sirius is shaking his head, but then—

Yesterday comes crashing back in exquisite detail. 

“He'd been having… what he described as panic attacks. For a couple of weeks now. I… he was going to see his GP about it tomorrow—fuck. Fuck, this is all my fault—”

“No,” the paramedic says firmly, kindly. “This is not anyone's fault—and you would be saying the same if you were your patient.” In the background, there's a snap as the oxygen mask is fitted, but Sirius can't tear his eyes from the young man's compassionate eyes. “It's just lucky that we've caught this now, before it damages his heart further.” 

“BP is responding,” the other paramedic says quietly. “Two minutes out, A&E is ready to receive.” 

Sirius drops down beside Remus, almost stumbling as the ambulance takes a sharp left at the same time. He runs his thumbs over Remus' cheeks, tracing where the oxygen mask bites into the lovely soft skin, then gently pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead. Sirius bends down, pressing a fierce kiss into the clammy skin there. “I love you,” he whispers, “you are my heart.”

Remus doesn't stir beneath him, but hearing the steadying beat of his heart on the monitor is a comfort Sirius can cling to. 

He stays that way for the final ninety seconds of the journey, murmuring love into Remus' pores and allowing the paramedics’ quiet conversation to wash over him. 

The second they reach the hospital, Marlene is there waiting to receive them. Her eyes widen as she catches sight of Sirius—dishevelled, red-eyed, still in his ratty sleepwear and bare feet cut up by the rough pavement—and then her entire face falls as she recognises Remus beneath his oxygen mask. But she looks back to Sirius, and her expression hardens, her professionalism taking the wheel as she listens to the paramedics' handover. 

Remus is whisked away by two resident doctors, and Marlene blocks Sirius from following in a move that sends rage fizzing down his spine. 

“McKinnon, let me—”

No. Sit down, Black. I'll let you know as soon as there's an update.”

“I can help—”

“No. You're going to let us do our job, Black. I'm not letting you back there, you're too close to this and you'll be in the way.” It's callous and Sirius hates that she's right—would be making the same call in her position—but he despises her for it. 

“Fuck, Marlene, just let me—”

“No. This is my ward, and the longer you stand here and argue with me, Black, the longer I'm not able to go and help your husband.” She folds her arms, eyes fierce and unyielding. 

Sirius forces himself to take a deep breath, wincing as it catches the sob in his throat.  “I can't lose him, Marlene.” It comes out broken, soft, embarrassing, and Sirius is pleading. “He's my everything, I—”

“I know, Sirius.” Marlene's eyes soften and she squeezes his shoulder. “But we've got him now—we'll stabilise him and we'll discuss a treatment plan to minimise the risk of this ever happening again. I've got Gideon coming down to support, and you know he's the best cardiologist in this place.” 

Sirius nods slowly, feeling physically sick with the overwhelm. The exhaustion makes it far too easy for Marlene to push his heavy limbs to the waiting area. Sirius sinks into a seat, eyes itching as he stares after where Remus disappeared, chest tight with fear. 

(He fucking hates waiting. He was always such an impatient child, always unable to sit still, always “why can't you be nice and quiet like your brother?” Or, when it was Regulus they were waiting for, after his brother's seizures escalated to the point of hospitalisation, his impatience and general wrongness became the cause of Regulus' illness—“you shouldn't have worked him up like that, how is he supposed to recover if you're sat there like that, behave yourself, you brat.”)

Sirius would take every single one of those waits, insults and criticism and all, without saying a goddamn thing, if it meant he was able to see Remus now. 

Instead, he folds in on himself and waits.

💉

“Black?” 

Sirius unfurls instantly, limbs stiff from where they’ve been tucked into his body, on his feet before they’ve regained feeling. He staggers into Marlene, but she catches him and holds him firm. “Woah, boy, take it easy.”

“How is he?”

Marlene smiles. Her eyes are tired, fatigue etched in the imprint of a face mask on her cheeks, but her smile is genuine. “He’s asking for you. Come on. We’ve wrangled you a private room for a few hours, provided nothing dramatic happens.”

Sirius wobbles after her, feeling—

Everything.

Anxiety, exhaustion, anger, grief—yes, but also—relief, love, joy—

It’s such an overwhelming rush that he almost feels high, like they’ve opened a line of morphine right into his veins, and it takes all his concentration to keep putting one foot in front of the other as he follows Marlene to the private room at the very end of the corridor.

Marlene pauses outside the door. “Now—we’ve had a long conversation, him and I, and he has promised to tell you everything we discussed. I’m trusting he’ll do that, but I will also go through it with you after you’ve seen him. Just because we know who we’re dealing with.”

Sirius nods hastily, practically vibrating with impatience. 

“Go on,” Marlene says softly. “But don’t wear him out too much.”

Sirius bursts through the door without another word, and there, at fucking last—

Remus is half-propped up in bed, the sheets pooled around him. He’s still pale, but his eyes are no longer clouded with pain. The cardiac monitor leads snake from beneath his hospital gown to the monitor screen, and the quiet, steady beat of it feels like a symphony to Sirius’ ears. Remus lights up when he sees Sirius, raising his right hand in a wave, before wincing as it pulls on his pulse oximeter and arterial line.

“Moony,” Sirius breathes, falling into the chair beside his bed, pulling it up as close as physically possible to the mattress. He leans over, rocking Remus’ chin up gently for a searing kiss, before pressing soft kisses to his cheeks, his nose, his forehead—

Remus pulls away with a laugh. “Hi,” he says, voice almost a little shy.

“How are you feeling?” Remus opens his mouth, and Sirius holds up a finger. “I want the whole truth, Moony.”

“I know,” he rolls his eyes. “Gideon, Marlene and Lily have already laid into me about that. I feel exhausted.”

Sirius waves a hand. “And…?”

Remus shrugs. “That’s mostly it. My chest is a little sore, and it aches when I take a deep breath. I’ve got some bruises where I fell—” Sirius makes an involuntary noise of distress, and Remus swallows. “How are you doing?”

Sirius dismisses the question. “Unimportant. What—”

“No. Important to me,” Remus says, quiet but firm, and the earnestness in his eyes splits Sirius straight open in one blow. The tears come fast and thick, and Sirius covers his face with his hands, mortified that now he’s crying, after Remus has been through one of the most traumatic medical events of his life—

“I need—” His voice breaks, and Remus’ eyes go wide. 

“Padfoot—love, what? What do you need?”

“I just—” Sirius scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I need to hold you. Please.”

“Oh.” Remus’ expression has gone very soft. “Oh, darling, come here—” He shuffles sideways with a wince, and Sirius is there at once, supporting to shift Remus’ weight to one side of the mattress, tucking his slim frame around him as he moves. Finally, they’re squeezed onto the bed, Remus’ monitoring lines carefully arranged across Sirius’ side as his arms curl over Remus’ torso. 

Remus lets out a breathless sigh, turning his head so that the air puffs onto Sirius’ scalp in a delicious little tickle. “I’m—I’m so fucking sorry I scared you,” he whispers, and Sirius holds him tighter.

“Better now,” he manages, though his eyes are still fucking leaking. 

There’s a pause, the quiet broken only by the machines beside them. Sirius watches the electrocardiogram rise and fall in regular patterns, trying to force his brain to connect that with the warm weight of Remus in his arms. 

“Do you… do you want the damage?” Remus asks after a while. He tries for a half-smile, as though he's talking about a faulty piece of equipment instead of the centre of Sirius’ entire universe. Sirius bites down the response he would ordinarily give to that, and just nods. Remus takes a breath, twisting to look at him. “The diagnosis is officially unstable angina, though Gideon reckons we can work to stabilise it with some medication and some… lifestyle changes.”

Sirius swallows hard, forcing himself to match the lightness in Remus’ tone. “So. No more illicit cigarettes with Frank?”

Remus stiffens. “Wait—you knew about those?”

Sirius chuckles despite himself, despite it all. “Moony. You are not as subtle as you think you are.”

Remus tips his head back against the pillows with a sigh. “Ugh. I thought we were being sneaky.”

“Not even a little bit. Alice and I were just biding our time to confront you both about it and force you to quit.”

“Well,” Remus tries to laugh, though it comes out a little too breathless. “I guess I have a good reason now. Um. Also. I cracked a rib when I fell—this one.” He hovers a hand over his lower left side. “But there’s not much anyone can do about that—”

It’s Sirius’ turn to stiffen now. “You let me fucking manhandle you when you have a cracked rib?!”

“I can’t really feel it,” Remus says.

“That’s… not the point, and you know it.” Remus huffs another laugh, but allows Sirius to—very gently now—tighten his hold on Remus’, tucking his face into the side of his neck. Sirius breathes in Remus’ scent, tainted as it is by the smell of hospital and pain, until he is enveloped by its presence, until his body is at last able to accept that Remus is going to be okay—especially if Sirius has anything to do with it, which he vehemently and wholeheartedly will. 

The two of them drift in semi-consciousness for a few minutes as their nervous systems reset together, but when Sirius cracks an eye open, it’s to see Remus is frowning up at the ceiling of the hospital room. His eyes look terribly sad, and Sirius’ stomach tightens, peacefulness at once cast off. 

“What’s going through your head?” he asks softly, gently running a finger over the crease in Remus’ forehead.

Remus huffs a laugh. “You won’t like it.”

“All the more reason to tell me then.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, so I can explain why whatever your brain is spewing is wrong.”

Remus rolls his eyes. “You don’t know that.”

Sirius twists his fingers gently into Remus’ mess of curls. “I know you,” he says simply, softening the implication with a hard kiss to his temple. “Talk to me.”

Remus stares down at himself—at the mound of his belly through the sheets—and sighs. “I just—I just feel so fucking stupid. I did this to myself. I’m literally a doctor, and I let myself get like—like this, I just. I knew I was getting fat and I went ahead and ate myself into heart disease like a fucking idiot, and now I’ve hurt you and everyone again, and—”

“Stop.” Sirius’ scarcely recognises the bite of his voice as it rings across them. He takes a breath, fighting for space around the rage swelling inside him. “Stop,” he repeats, unable to continue for a moment beyond the ache of anger in his belly.

Remus stares at him, eyes small and sad. “I told you that you wouldn’t—just, forget I said anything, it’s st—”

“No,” Sirius spits. “I can’t forget this, Remus.” He sits up a little straighter but keeps his hold on Remus. “You got sick,” he says, his voice sharp as a scalpel, “and you almost died, and your body did what it needed to in order to survive.” He runs a hand over the curve of Remus’ belly, scowling at the way Remus cringes at the motion. “Yeah, Moony, you got a little fat. That isn’t a fucking flaw. That isn’t a something you get to kill yourself over, because do you know what the bigger issue is here?” Remus opens his mouth in protest, but Sirius shakes his head sharply. “I’m not done. The bigger issue here has fuck all to do with the size you wear or the shape of your body, and everything to do with the fact that you are always at the very, very bottom of the pile and that you work yourself to goddamn death thinking you have to be everything to everyone. It’s the acting like you don’t need sleep and the eating like absolute shit, when you remember or whatever you can find.” Sirius takes a deep breath, the rage dissipating slightly now that he’s allowing it to seep out in the form of one last bid to make Remus understand. “It’s the stress that’s put you here, and unless you start looking after yourself—letting me look after you, it’s the stress that’s going to kill you.” He swallows. “And if it kills you, it will take me with it, Moony.”

“Sirius, I—”

“Could we eat healthier? And exercise more? And do all the shit we preach to our patients? Yes—but Moony, we could both do those things. But it’s the way you shoulder every single thing as if you have to do it by yourself, as if you still have everything to prove—you don’t have anything to prove to me, Moony!”

“You’re not a hippo, Sirius—”

“I said stop!” The words burst out in a shout this time, shocking them both into silence. “You don’t get to talk about yourself like that! You don’t get to fixate on your weight being the problem when you’re so tightly wound, it nearly gave you a heart attack. You’re not some animal, Moony—you are a person with a body; a person and a body I happen to adore, by the way.”

Remus stares down at himself, and Sirius can see the tears balanced on his lower lashes like tiny pearls. Just as clearly, he can see the internal battle in Remus’ brain, a war he is fighting so fucking hard to win. Sirius would do anything to give him the final ammunition to end the war victorious. 

This time, when he speaks, it’s softer. The desperation doesn’t tear at his throat, though his heart aches so fiercely he could combust. “I love you, more than anything, more than I ever thought possible. Your friends adore you. You are a fucking brilliant doctor and a wonderful man—please let us help you to stay around for years and years to come. Please let us help, Moony.”

“I think…” Remus takes a deep breath and tears his eyes away from his body. “I think I need help, Sirius—I—” His voice breaks all at once. “Okay,” he manages, between hiccupping cries. “I want you to help me.”

“Moony,” Sirius whispers, his own voice breaking beneath the weight of his relief, his pride, his love, his everything. He brushes Remus’ tears away with his thumbs. “Thank you. It would be my greatest honour.”

The journey ahead is a long and bumpy one, Sirius knows. There will be further health scares and fierce arguments and bad habits creeping back in like black mould. There will be a whole new set of medications to adjust to, a way of life to re-assess and rebuild, and a lifetime of self–loathing for Remus to sift through—but Remus will not be alone for any of it. Sirius will be his hands if he’ll allow it, their friends the safety net for the inevitable falls. 

For now, though, their embrace is at once fierce and tender, hopeful and accepting—and the strongest love Sirius has ever known. 

It feels like the sweetest kind of surrender.