Talks.
“Morning,” Remus grumbled as he made his way into the living room, limping slightly. He was grasping his cane tightly. Some days, he made his way around the flat with no support, but today was no such day.
Lily was sitting by the dining table, reading a book whilst eating cereal. She looked up, smiling softly. “I wanna ask if you slept alright, but I could hear you sniffing in the middle of the night.”
Remus clicked his tongue and went to the kitchen part of the living room. “Bloody thin walls, can’t get an ounce of privacy.”
Lily pursed her lips and flipped the page in her book. “Nightmare again?”
Remus hummed in confirmation as he started to prepare his own breakfast—toast. “Can’t fucking escape them, it seems like. And when I woke up, my fucking leg fucking hurt even worse than fucking yesterday, and it’s fucking Friday and I have to be at work all fucking day.”
“I almost feel obligated to scold you for that overuse of the word ‘fucking’, but I’ll let it slide,” Lily informed him.
“Thanks, Miss Evans,” Remus said and ruffled her hair as he moved past with his toast. He sat down opposite her.
Lily smiled and continued to read her book. Remus began to eat, his mind drifting to a certain long-haired posh boy he’d seen only the day prior. According to Sirius, his first work day at Ink Deep would be today.
“Oi, Lily?”
“Mhm?” Lily looked up from her book, a frown etched between her eyebrows.
“Remember that tattoo I’ve been pondering about getting for months now?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well”—Remus cleared his throat—“remember that man I mentioned yesterday, Sirius?”
“Ah.” Understanding flooded Lily’s eyes. “The man who works at the tattoo shop. Yeah, you mentioned him about three or four times. No, scratch that, six times.”
Remus wrinkled his nose. “Did not.”
“You did.” Lily put a mouthful of cereal in her mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “So, you wanna book an appointment with him or what?”
Remus shrugged. “Maybe I will.”
“Give it a bit of thought,” Lily said. “It’s no small tattoo, and the boy might be pretty, but I’m sure he ain’t worth regret.”
“Lily Evans, the voice of reason,” Remus muttered with a smile. “Fine, I will.”
“Oh, and, Remus,” Lily said, voice smaller now, “I know this is probably a given, but if Sirius is into men, please make sure everything is safe before you take anything further. There have been so many cases lately—”
“I promise, Lily,” Remus muttered and placed a hand on her arm to squeeze. “I got my blood checked before the, you know, and I haven’t been with anyone since.”
“I know, but please—”
“If things should go that way with Sirius, which they won’t, I just wanna be his friend—”
“—Now you’re just lying to yourself.”
Remus cackled lowly. “Well, should it go that way, I’ll make sure we’re both in the clear.”
“Thanks, Rem,” Lily said and put down her book. She’d finished eating. She stood up and took her empty bowl to the kitchen sink. As she started to wash it, Remus ate the rest of his toast; grey eyes behind his closed lids every time he blinked.
*
“Remus, careful!”
“Shit!”
The words barely left Remus’s lips before he crashed down from the stool on which he was standing, the heavy box of old, and for some reason heavy, bank records, tumbling down with him.
He would have hit the cement floor of the back room if it hadn’t been for Dorcas who’d run in to catch him halfway down. Her arms were secure around him, and she helped him regain balance. The box was still in his arms, though some papers had fallen out.
“Thanks,” Remus grunted and stepped out of her hold. He exhaled sharply as he walked.
“Are you an utter idiot!” Dorcas exclaimed. “Why would you get onto that stool?”
“To get the box,” Remus muttered and placed the box on the floor next to him. “Obviously.” He crouched down to pick up the papers, but even that small movement made pain flare in his leg.
“Remus.” Dorcas crouched down next to him, collecting papers as well.
“Dorcas,” he responded, tight-lipped.
“It’s okay to ask for help, you know.”
“I know.”
“So, why don’t you?”
“Mhm, why don’t I?” Remus tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Oh! Maybe because I’m a twenty-five-old man who has to use a cane; who can barely walk some days, when I just last year I was able to climb stairs without losing my breath; I could go on a run whenever I wanted to; I could climb a fucking stool without losing my balance. Maybe I just don’t want to feel dependent on—Don’t fucking look at me with pity, Dorcas.” His words were harsh and far from fair, but life, Remus had learned, never was.
“Sorry.” Dorcas averted her eyes and picked up the last few papers. “I didn’t mean to.”
“They never do,” Remus muttered.
Sirius hadn’t looked at him with pity. He had simply taken Remus in, scar-face and cane, and not an ounce of wonder had touched his face; not an ounce of the usual question of What the hell happened to you? painted across his unfairly attractive face.
Remus wasn’t an idiot. Of course, the questions had been there–they had to, but he hadn’t been able to see them displayed on Sirius’s features. Perhaps it was because Sirius was a stranger. Sirius didn’t know Remus before yesterday; didn’t know how much his injuries affected his life, and therefore hadn’t looked at him with pity. But still, that had meant a lot.
“You’re lucky I came in here when I did,” Dorcas said, clearing her throat. She stood, wiping her hands on her trousers. “Will you be okay back here, now?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Remus muttered and stood, too. He hobbled over to the wall where his cane was resting. As much of a helpful tool as it was, it was also a sign of weakness in Remus’s eyes. He grasped it and supported his weight against it. Much better. He hated how much better it was.
“Okay.” Dorcas still didn’t look like she believed him.
“I’m fine, Cas, okay?” Remus said. “Trust me, I am. I’ll just sort through those—” He gestured to the box which still stood on the floor. “I’ll come out to you once I’m finished.”
Dorcas opened her mouth, but just then, the sound of the bell chiming inside the shop was heard, and she opted for a nod instead.
It turned out that Remus would be returning to the front of the shop much quicker than he first anticipated. He was sitting by the desk, sorting through the documents, when Dorcas poked her head into the back room, saying that someone was asking for him by name.
Remus’s heart skipped a beat and he quickly grabbed his cane.
As he had secretly hoped, Sirius was standing behind the cashier's table, rolling on the soles of his feet. A grin split his face in two when he saw Remus approach.
“Hi,” he said.
Remus smiled, stopping behind the table. He leaned against it subtly. “Hello.”
“It’s my turn to have a question for you,” Sirius said.
Remus’s eyebrows raised. “What?”
“Yesterday you asked me where I live, stalker, and I also ended up telling you where I work, so now I only think it’s fair if I also get to ask you a question.”
Remus shook his head, amused. “Some logic. Okay, fire away.”
Sirius smirked and reached into the pocket of his leather jacket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You smoke?”
What a question.
Remus wet his lips. “Yeah, I do.”
“Great,” Sirius said. “I have half an hour's break till my next client, do you maybe wanna…” He gestured towards the door.
“Uh.” Remus looked to where Dorcas was standing in the door to the back room. “Would you—?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Dorcas said, biting back a smile. “Go have a smoke you two. See you in half an hour. Stay where I can see you. Don’t want you going missing!”
Remus sent her a Really? look, to which she just shrugged mischievously.
Sirius didn’t seem to pick up on the implication. A shame, really.
“C’mon, posh boy,” Remus muttered and made his way around the table. “Let’s grab a fag.”
Dorcas snorted.
Outside, the air was crisp. It was a nice change from the shop, which could get a bit too stuffy in all types of weather.
“Here.” Sirius handed him a cigarette and Remus gratefully put it between his lips. Even more gratefully, he let Sirius light it for him while it was between his lips.
Sirius lit one for himself, too, and inhaled. It was after his first exhale that he said, “So, I listened to the album.”
“The album?” Remus said, confused, transfixed by the way Sirius’s fingers were holding the cigarette. He was wearing rings. He hadn’t worn rings yesterday.
Sirius raised an eyebrow. “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, you know, the one you gave me for my name.”
Remus’s face split in a giddy smile. “Oh, yeah, that one.”
Sirius snorted, taking another drag. “I’ve come to my conclusion on whether it was good for the occasion of eating pizza and drinking beer.”
The corner of Remus’s mouth quirked up. “Yeah?”
Sirius hummed around his cigarette and, God, it was not fair for his cheekbones to look like that. “It was fucking amazing. Bowie has an interesting voice that really brought the songs to life. A shame no one made me listen sooner.”
“And which song was your favourite?” Remus asked, inhaling a puff of smoke.
“Moonage Daydream,” Sirius said without a moment of hesitation. “Followed by Suffragette City.”
“Excellent choices,” Remus mused. “They suit you.”
“Oh. Thank you?” Sirius sent him a small, reserved smile.
Remus just smiled, saying nothing as he took a drag.
A few moments passed in comfortable silence. Remus observed Sirius as the other man smoked. Sirius was the kind of beautiful people couldn’t help but be drawn to. His skin was pale and clean; his hair fell in shoulder-long black waves; his eyes were stormy grey; his lips were plump and kissable. So kissable. That was the first thing Remus had noticed about him.
Sirius wasn’t taller than Remus, but he was broader in the shoulders. His waist, however, made Remus’s mouth water. And of course, there were the rings and the single earring in the form of a cross that hung from his left earlobe.
“Like what you see?” Sirius asked with a cocked eyebrow.
Remus smirked, wriggled his eyebrows teasingly, and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Sirius spluttered around his cigarette and started coughing around the butt of it. “C-christ,” he wheezed as he regained his breath. “Smoke in the wrong airway.”
Remus chuckled, amused. “If that’s what you wanna call it.”
Sirius’s cheeks had turned crimson. He quickly stomped out his cigarette. “So, Remus Lupin, what do you do in your spare time?” he changed the subject.
Remus was slightly disappointed by the quick change in conversation, but he hadn’t expected it differently. “I write,” he said.
“Oh?” Sirius’s eyebrows shot up in pleasant surprise. “What do you write?”
“Poetry,” Remus replied sheepishly.
“You any good?” Sirius asked, looking at Remus with sincere curiosity.
“I would like to think I am,” Remus said, shy. “I would like to get published one day, but, er, doubt I’ll ever be able to live off it.”
“Would you like to?” Sirius tilted his head; a small frown between his eyebrows. The cars drove past noisily on the road, but it dimmed when Sirius looked at him with that look.
“Yeah,” Remus breathed, breathless. “I have so much to say.”
Sirius’s eyes twinkled. “Then publish it.”
A dog was barking further down the street, and Remus was vaguely aware of how fast his heart was beating.
“It’s not that easy. And—I don’t even think I have enough poems that’s good enough for a book.”
“Then wait till you have, but when you do, publish it. It doesn’t matter if you get famous. What matters is that someone hears what you have to say. I would read it.”
Remus cleared his throat; cheeks heated. “Thank you.”
Sirius grinned and inclined his head towards the tattoo shop on the other side of the street. “I better get back there.”
“Uh-huh,” Remus dumbly uttered.
Sirius shook his head amused, and, God, how could anyone be that pretty? It made Remus weak in the knees for reasons unassociated with his bad leg.
“Alright,” Sirius said and began to step towards the road. “See you, Remus.”
“Sirius, wait!” Remus burst out, panicked by the sight of Sirius leaving.
Sirius turned, looking at Remus with a raised eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Am I your friend now?” Remus breathed. His fingers were clutching his cane so hard his knuckles had gone white.
Sirius tilted his head as if in deep thought; lips pursed as he tapped his chin. His face split in a grin as he said, “Nah.”
“C’mon,” Remus groaned. “What will it take for you to just say yes?”
“I don’t know,” Sirius said teasingly. “See you, Lupin!” And with that, he crossed the road.
“Christ,” Remus muttered, running a hand over his face. “That fucking bastard of a lovely looking—”
Once he stepped back into the shop, Dorcas raised an eyebrow at him, the corner of her mouth quirked up in a suggestive smirk.
“No!” Remus immediately said, his free hand held up. “Do. Not. Comment.”
“Alriiight,” Dorcas said with a sing-song voice. “But just on an off note, try and look less ready to get on your knees in the streets; there are after all other people.”
*
The next two days were a Saturday and a Sunday. Sirius worked Saturday, but Remus wasn’t at work when he went to ask if he was. It was his day off, apparently. Sunday was Sirius's day off, so he didn’t see Remus again until Monday, when he, once again, found himself asking Remus to join him for a smoke.
The same thing happened on Tuesday.
And Wednesday.
Thursday.
Talking with Remus was easy in a way that Sirius had only ever experienced with James. Yet it was different. Each time they met, they switched with asking each other questions, something that had become a bit of a game for them.
On Monday, Remus asked Sirius if he’d ever been high. Sirius scoffed and said yes.
On Tuesday, Sirius asked Remus if he was a dog person or a cat person. The answer was a dog person.
On Wednesday, Remus asked Sirius what his favourite Queen song was. Sirius replied with Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy.
On Thursday, Sirius asked Remus if he’d ever been to another country. “No, not all of us grew up rich, posh boy,” was Remus’s reply around the cigarette. He said it with a grin, so Sirius knew there was no harm behind it. Sirius smirked and said, “J'aime de plus en plus ce surnom.”
Remus shoved his shoulder. “And he speaks bloody French too. What did you say?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
All their smoke breaks started like that before they would drift into seemingly meaningless conversation, but to Sirius, it felt far from meaningless. It was something to look forward to.
At the end of each conversation, Remus would ask Sirius the question, “Are we fully friends now?” to which Sirius would always say no. It was more for the sake of fun than anything else; they both knew it, Sirius could see it in Remus’s eyes. But he could also see the determination there; the pure will to make a maybe a yes. So, Sirius was going to make him work for it.
Today was Friday, and Sirius knew that Remus had a day off from work, so he didn’t leave the shop after his first client of the day. He stayed till his second client arrived. It was a woman who’d wanted a tiger tattooed on her upper arm. Three and a half hours later, her new tiger tattoo on her arm was finished, and Sirius was in the midst of cleaning up the supplies as the bell above the door chimed.
He looked up instantly and was surprised to see Remus step inside. Remus had his cane with him, a beanie tucked over his curls, and a denim jacket over one of his usual grandpa jumpers.
“Remus?” Sirius asked, surprised.
Remus lifted his hand in a small wave. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” Sirius asked and slowly moved over to him. "Today's your day off." Remus was standing by the cashier’s table, leaning slightly against it. He always did that when he had a surface close to him. Sirius figured it had something to do with his leg, but he didn’t want to ask.
“I’m here to book an appointment,” Remus said smugly.
“Oh!” Sirius let out, surprised. “You—Tattoos?”
“Mhm,” Remus hummed. “Have quite a few of them.”
Sirius wet his lips and swallowed. “Oh. Nice.”
“Yeah. Nice,” Remus said with a raised eyebrow. “So, can I book an appointment?”
“Oh, yeah!” Sirius hurried behind the desk and began to get the computer ready. It was a few years old and was a bit slow. Sirius’s boss had told him just to whack it on the side if it was going too slow, so that’s what Sirius did when the computer took too much time to open their appointment system.
“Did you just slap the computer?”
“Yep,” Sirius grinned. “Okay, now it’s ready. First, have you got tattooed here before?”
“Yeah, I have.” Remus nodded.
“Noted,” Sirius said, eyes on the screen. “Do you have an artist you prefer to get your work done by, or do you just want me to choose one for you?”
“Oh, I have one in mind,” Remus said, now leaning his whole weight against the table, arms crossed. He had placed his cane against the side of the table where Sirius couldn’t see it. “I’m looking at him.”
Sirius snorted but nodded. “Alright, so me, it is, then. How big is the tattoo you want?”
“The length of my spine,” Remus said. “I want all the moon phases tattooed along it.”
“Alright, I can do that, easily. It’ll take around five hours, give or take, I think, and I’ll need a week to draw a design. How about Friday, November 8 with a start at nine a.m.? Does that work for you?”
“Yeah, that’s perfect, thanks,” Remus mumbled. There was a soft smile on his face. It made Sirius’s stomach make weird movements. He averted his eyes to the computer.
He finished setting the appointment up on the computer and once more turned his attention to Remus who was still standing there. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, are we friends yet?” Remus asked.
Sirius snorted and shook his head, amused. “Let me see…” Yes. “No.”
“Alright, but I think I’ve found out a way to really win you over, now.”
Sirius’s lips parted, his heart diving for the pit of his stomach. “Win me over?”
“Yeah, you know, to make you my friend.”
“Oh. Right. So, how?”
“You, me, James, and Lily our flat on the next Friday. Dinner, wine, music, and a Monopoly tournament.”
“I’m afraid you’ll regret that,” Sirius said. “I’m a master at Monopoly.”
Remus shrugged, smirking. “Prove it.”
“But that would mean I would spend so much time in your company next Friday," Sirius groaned dramatically. "How will I survive?"
“Make it sound more like a problem.”
“Okay—”
“No,” Remus cut him off, laughing. “But really, what do you say?”
Sirius sighed heavily, craning his neck towards the ceiling. “Fine.”
“Yes!” Remus straightened up immediately to fist-bump their air. A small wince moved over his features as his full weight was on his leg. Sirius didn’t let it show that he noticed. Remus quickly had his cane back to support him, a tired sigh leaving his lips. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to work. See you, Sirius.”
He began moving towards the door just as one of Sirius’s co-workers, Lucy, came out from the hallway in the back with a customer. The more intimate tattoos were made in there for privacy. A bandage could be seen faintly by the collar of the client's shirt.
“Bye!” Sirius called as Lucy ushered him away from the cashier's table to get the payment.
Remus waved goodbye with a smile.