Remus didn't want to tell James that he knew what it was like to want something so much you were being torn apart inside. He didn't want James to know how well he knew that. He didn't want to have to tell James that after a year desperately wanting a home - shelter, friends, love, food, a home - the only way to make it through the day, and the week, and the month, and the year, and the other six years was to convince yourself you didn't want it. That you didn't need it. Because otherwise, that desperation ate you up inside, made you question everything you'd ever said and done and not done to find the source, the excuse the universe could give for why you weren't deserving of having those basic needs met. The most basic needs behind which everything else paled.
Remus knew that ache well.
And he'd asked himself that question so many times that for a long time, he knew he wasn't deserving of any of those things.
James didn't need to know that.
And Remus did ache, a tightness in his chest he hadn't wanted to acknowledge. To acknowledge it meant that he couldn't deny it anymore, that he had to face it.
By way of answer, Remus whispered, "I want him. I want him, James, I-" His face the very mask of a desperate man who knew the object of his desire could never be his; abject misery. Speaking the words aloud made it real, forced him to accept them as fact. He couldn't deny it anymore.
Leaning his head back against the wall behind him, Remus looked straight ahead at the far edge of the ceiling as he breathed, tears rising to his eyes and quickly blinked away as he thought the tightness in his chest would swallow him whole. And then he swallowed it down. Remus had to accept it as a part of him now, jaw tight as if afraid it might come back out.
'It's alright to want him,' he told himself as he breathed, willing himself to accept it. 'It's alright to want him and not to have him. I have enough of him. And that's alright.'
"What about you?" he asked eventually. "What did the luggage give you? It had better be good."