The air outside was thick with the damp chill of a London night, the kind that seeped into bones and refused to leave, much like the stubborn haze of alcohol clouding Sirius's mind. The underground party still pulsed behind you, muffled laughter and the distorted thrum of music bleeding through the walls of some faceless bloke's flat—a place where Firewhisky flowed like water and inhibitions dissolved into smoke.

You had followed him into yet another den of smoke and recklessness, not because you wanted to be seen clinging to the arm of the most reckless Gryffindor of their year, but because you were the only one stubborn enough to drag him back out when the lines between fun and self-destruction blurred beyond recognition. You had gripped his wrist with a force that surprised him, your nails biting into his skin as you hauled him through the crowd, past the leering faces and half-empty bottles, until the cold night air hit him like a slap.

Now, standing on the pavement, the world tilted dangerously beneath his feet, the edges of his vision smudged with the haze of too much firewhisky. He could still taste it—burning at the back of his throat, metallic and sour, like regret.

"Stop shouting," Sirius slurred, the words thick and clumsy in his mouth, each syllable an effort. He hated this—hated the way your voice cracked when you were angry, hated the way your hands trembled when you reached for him, hated the way you looked at him like he was something fragile, something broken.

But most of all, he hated that you were right.

"I said—!" The growl ripped from him before he could stop it, raw and ragged, and his arm swung out—not to strike, never to strike, but to frighten, to silence, to make you flinch back just enough that you'd stop looking at him like that, like you could still see the man he used to be beneath the wreckage.