It's been 10+ years since I wrote fanfiction and 5+ weeks since I left my house. But the world is ending, so hey, let's indulge our adolescent hobbies together!

Hope you all are doing well!

"That's it. I've done it," Sirius said with theatrical weariness. It was half-past the last time he'd wandered into the kitchen. This time, he was wearing a different jumper and clutching a bag of crisps, in open defiance of Remus's announcement that he was cooking dinner.

"Done what?" Remus replied, stirring a thick, pungent stew in a red enamel pot.

"All of it. Everything. Literally every thing that can be done in your flat has been done, by me, over the course of the past 487-odd days," Sirius said, collapsing onto the couch.

"Twenty-nine," Remus corrected.

"Twenty-nine what?"

"Days. It'll be a month on Thursday." The pot he was stirring began to bubble ominously.

"Thursday," Sirius said, laughing loudly. "Listen to you with your 'Thursday.' As though 'Thursday' exists anymore. As though it ever existed, except as a comforting fiction in the face of time's endless, grey onslaught."

"Did it?" Remus replied absently. The pot, though no longer bubbling, had begun to emit an odor resembling something Peter once brewed in Potions their Second Year. He remembered the aroma so distinctly because it had lingered in everyone's hair for days afterward. For the first time in his life, Remus felt confident in his culinary instincts—he was absolutely, without a doubt, doing it wrong.

Sirius sighed dramatically. "Yesterday, tomorrow, night, day, what does it matter? There is only eating time and sleeping time now."

"What about drinking time? You've done a very respectable amount of drinking."

"Yes, I suppose. But all else is for naught," Sirius said, ambling over to where Remus was standing in the kitchenette part of their living room-kitchenette combo.

It wasn't a terrible flat, per se. It didn't come with any unexpected tenants, be they rodent or insect, and the landlord was only benignly incompetent. It was what Remus referred to as "modest" and what Sirius privately thought of as "a bit of a shithole." Not that he'd ever say as much. Remus had worked hard to make it comfortable, and everything from the abundant-yet-mismatched coasters to the cookie jar full of chocolates was so wonderfully Remus that it made up for the grime.

He leaned back against the scratched green counter and stretched. His hands brushed the loose cabinet door above him, and it clattered softly. Remus noticed that he was barefoot and the ends of his hair were still wet from the shower. That solved the mystery of why Sirius had missed his last three ten-minute check-ins.

"Christ, Moony, are you still indulging your trouser fetish as the world falls apart?"

"If by 'your trouser fetish,' you mean 'wearing them,' then yes. Yes, I am. I've grown rather accustomed to them." Remus frowned and turned off heat. His carefully planned stew was an abject failure, and clearly, Sirius's need for attention was more pressing. "And the world isn't falling apart. And even if it was, I'd prefer to face it fully clothed. In fact, I'd argue what's disturbing is how quickly you fell completely out of the habit of wearing them."

Sirius rolled his eyes and walked up close behind him at the stove, his chin resting on Remus's shoulder. If he was standing on his toes to reach while pretending that he wasn't, Remus certainly wasn't going to mention it. He'd been with Sirius for almost a decade, and with Sirius for almost two years. He knew Sirius's strengths and weaknesses, his sore spots and his pet peeves, better than he knew the angles of his body (which was no small feat). Over time, the number of unspoken things between them had grown, things that weren't worth the hurt that speaking them aloud would yield. Maybe one day it would all come rushing to the surface, when they were two cranky old men with nothing to worry over, except the moral implications of leaving one's dirty socks on the coffee table, again, after being asked specifically not to.

Just then, though, there was too much to worry about already. In that strange, singular moment, as the world hibernated restlessly around them, they could almost hear the scratching-quill sounds of history being written. Remus found it both darkly fascinating and utterly terrifying.

Sirius, on the other hand, had been bouncing off the walls with this weird, chaotic energy that made Remus certain he was scared, annoyed with himself for being scared, and unlikely to admit that either was the case. Sirius had never done well stuck inside, but he was verging on a new level of restlessness that made Remus feel sorry for him. Remus had his books and his doomed attempts at cooking to keep him company. Sirius needed actual company, real, flesh and blood people to laugh at his jokes and thank him when he bought yet another round for the table.

And so, Remus pocketed his little grievances, unaired, like tokens of his affection. Perhaps it wasn't a particularly grand, romantic gesture, but it was the sort of patient, thankless love that Remus believed he did best.

Sirius looked down at the shiny red pot and asked innocently, "so what's for dinner then? Beef stew?"

"It was chicken, actually. I don't know why the color's all—" Remus trailed off with a frustrated hand wiggle. "There's leftover pasta though. Maybe a couple of cold cuts. And of course, beans. Oh, so many, many beans."

"You bought the beans."

"I did."

"You bought so many beans that we will have to bequeath them to our descendants when we die," Sirius said, wrapping his arms around Remus's waist. The front of Remus's shirt was soft beneath his fingertips and warm from the stove. Sirius felt a wave of calm pass over him as he sank into Remus's boney back.

"I did do that. It seemed reasonable at the time," Remus said defensively.

"I know it did," Sirius said. "And if purchasing your body weight in dry goods is what it takes to make you happy, I am more than willing to eat beans with you for the rest of our lives."

Remus gave the stew, or the substance that had once aspired to be stew, one last mournful prod with his spatula and turned around. He pulled Sirius tight against his chest.

"I wouldn't say I'm happy. But I am grateful," Remus said. "We're safe, at least for now, and so are our friends. And I can think of far worse places to be trapped indefinitely."

"The company's not bad, either," Sirius murmured into the side of his neck.

"Not at all."

"And you don't think you'll come to loathe my very being by the time this is over?"

"I don't. And I appreciate your certainty that this will end," Remus said, only half-kidding.

"Even if I slowly go mad and become an obstacle to your own survival?"

"Don't be silly." Remus smiled and kissed him on the top of the head. "You've always been a massive obstacle to my survival, and yet here we are."

"Please. You wouldn't know what to do without me."

"I wouldn't." Remus said calmly and without hesitation. Sirius was as much a force in his life as magic or moonlight. He could live without Sirius, sure, but he couldn't begin to picture what that life would actually be like.

Sirius pressed his lips to the side of Remus's neck where it met his shoulder and exhaled. His mouth was warm, and Remus felt his shoulder muscles relax. He hadn't realized they were tense.

"Are you hungry?" Sirius asked. The sound was muffled, and the words lead directly into a series of kisses.

"Mmhmmm," Remus hummed. His head rolled back as Sirius placed another, more aggressive kiss at the base of his jaw.

"I don't believe you," Sirius said, biting down gently.

"What about you?"

"You said you were cooking. So, I finished the crisps."

They both chuckled, and Sirius took Remus's hand, pulling him away from the stove and into the living room, a full three steps. Shortly thereafter, much to Sirius's delight, Remus finally removed his trousers.

Remus forgot to rinse his red enamel pot until the next morning. The stew-that-wasn't left an unsightly yellow stain that no substance, muggle or magic, could remove. In the years to come, Remus would be reminded of that night, of that whole era of his life, every time he saw that stupid stain, and he would decide that the only sensible thing to do would be to replace it.

And then he'd gently place it in the back of the cabinet, where it would be safe.