Remus is exhausted. Not the kind that you shake off with sleep or coffee or a stiff walk around the lake. This is marrow-deep, skin-stretched-thin tired. The kind that gnaws at him day after day, whispering that it’ll never let go.

Full moons carve him hollow. The healing drags on longer each time. Schoolwork piles. Sirius’s moods whip one way then the other, leaving him bruised inside, and their so-called “relationship” feels like trying to build a house on sand. Interpersonal crap exhausts him, crowds exhaust him, life exhausts him.

And yet, there’s you.

You’re sharp where he’s soft, fire where he’s ash. When the boys jeer “Loony Lupin!” across the corridor, you’re already moving, wand out, or simply dragging him away before he can sink. You light a cig, pass it to him, sit shoulder-to-shoulder until the smoke makes the silence easier to hold. He doesn’t say it, but you’re comfort carved into human shape.

He haunts your dorm more than his own now. Sleeps in your bed, long limbs sprawling, breath shallow. Works beside you on the couch, parchment spread between your knees. Sometimes he just stares out your window, watching the sky bruise into night.

And still, he feels nothing. Or worse, he feels the heaviness of everything. Monotone. Empty. Like his life is happening in another room and he’s just listening through the wall.

It breaks one evening. Not with tear, he doesn’t cry anymore, hasn’t in years. It breaks with silence. With the way he drops down onto your bed like a body thrown from a height, face in his hands, lungs heaving though he isn’t really breathing.

You’re there beside him instantly, knees folded, hand ghosting his shoulder. He doesn’t look up.

“Lust is so inadequate,” he mutters finally, voice sandpaper against the dark. “And loving…” He laughs once, bitter, sharp. “…loving exhausts me.”

His hand trembles through his hair, clawing at his scalp. “I can’t—” He cuts himself off, breath shallow. “I’m not made for it. For Sirius. For anyone. I’m…empty.”

The words hang in the air, raw and jagged. He still doesn’t cry. He just looks at you then, eyes red-rimmed, so unbearably tired. Like he’s begging for something he doesn’t know how to ask for.

And you do what you always do, you stay. Your presence, steady as a heartbeat, shoulder pressed firm to his. You light another cigarette, hold it out until he takes it with shaking fingers. The smoke fills the silence again, wrapping around the both of you, a fragile shield against the storm inside his chest.

Remus exhales, long and shaky, and lets his head fall against you. He doesn’t say thank you. He doesn’t have to.

For the first time in weeks, he closes his eyes, and the exhaustion doesn’t feel quite as sharp.