Rocket Man
August 31st, 1975
“Who’s gonna roll your cigarettes for you off at that posh school of yours, huh?” Simon quipped, bent over the steaming concrete as he finished another and set it to the side.
Remus hadn’t the energy to respond. The miserable heat of the last day of August was enough to shut anyone up. He reached down for one of the cigarettes Simon had just finished and lit it at his lips. Simon looked up at him with a scowl.
“Already wasting my hard work,” he huffed, plucking the fag from Remus’ fingers. He laid his head back against the brick wall behind him, his sandy blonde curls falling over his face as he shut his eyes and took a drag from the cigarette.
“I have enough to last me ‘till Christmas at least,” Remus said, absentmindedly. It was past six, casting the sun at a sharp angle into the London alleyway where they sat. They traded the cigarette back and forth in silence. Remus couldn’t tell if it was the heat that quieted them anymore or his own nervousness to speak. He was never nervous with Simon. He couldn’t be when they’d grown up together the way they had. Having been friends since they were five, every embarrassment, every mistake, every stupid stunt, or life-altering event was something they went through together. From stealing liquor, to skipping school, to sharing stories of their awful fathers.
But that was all about to change. This would be the first school year they spent apart since… ever. Remus was leaving the next morning for Hogwarts Secondary School deep in the hills of Scotland. Just the name of it made him nauseous. And Simon would stay in London, going to the same school with the same assholes they had always taken on together in previous years. Remus knew things between the two of them would hardly change. He only worried about Simon being in London without him. The two always balanced each other out; Simon got Remus to spend his time doing anything other than reading and glaring at people and Remus kept Simon from getting beat up or arrested. He had a knack for getting himself into fights and Remus couldn’t do much to mediate from the other side of the country.
Snapped out of his daze by a car horn, Remus glanced up to see Simon lighting himself another cigarette. Simon caught his eye and blew smoke into his face with a cheeky smirk.
“God—you fucker,” Remus coughed, kicking Simon’s trainer. He did nothing but laugh quietly in return and pass the fag over to Remus. There was only a moment of silence before Remus couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re going to be alright, aren’t you?” Simon smiled and looked out at the busy street.
“Fuck you mean, ‘course I’ll be,” he said. He glanced back at Remus and took the cigarette again. “I’m always alright, aren’t I?”
“You know what I mean,” Remus said. “You’re gonna get yourself into worse without me here to babysit you.”
“Babysit?” Simon scoffed. “Well I’m touched, Lupin, really, but I’m a big boy I can manage,” Remus was silent but he could feel his friends eyes boring into him. “Aww, c’mon Louie don’t be sad,” he said, kicking his leg. Remus glared at him out of the corner of his eye.
“You know I hate that nickname,” he said. Simon’s face split into his usual huge boyish grin.
“S’why I use it. But really, I’ll be fine. You will be too,” he said, looking at Remus with kind eyes.
“Shut up, I know.”
“We had a good summer didn’t we? We made the most of it just like we said we would so lighten up.” Remus knew he was right. He stared at Simon as he redid his laces before shutting his eyes and trying to capture the moment. Simon’s idiotic grin, the smell of the fags, the sound of the busy street next to them, even the blistering heat and the sweat running down his back because of it. He wanted to remember all of it.
When he opened his eyes, Simon was looking back at him. Remus jumped up.
“What?” Simon asked.
“C’mon it’s my last night,” Remus said. “I wanna get pissed.”
* * *
Remus didn’t remember most of the night. Just bits and pieces of him and Simon playing cards and singing with some men in a pub. When he woke he was being shaken by the bartender, with Simon leaned up against his shoulder in the booth.
“Clear out, kid, we’re closing.” The bartender turned and walked away as Remus shook Simon off his shoulder.
“Si. Si wake up, we gotta go,” After a moment Simon woke with a groan and instantly hid his face in his hands.
“Oh my god, Louie, if you don’t shut up…” he said, his fingers reaching into his hair and curling into fists.
“We have to leave, they’re closing,”
“Fine,”
As they stumbled across the sticky wooden floor of the pub, Remus looked up and saw the time on the clock above the bar: 1:03 a.m. A sense of dull fear washed over him as he thought of the prospect of returning home at this hour. His aunt was gonna kill him.
The two boys stepped out into the rainy street and Simon sat down on the edge of the curb.
“You’re sitting in a puddle, you know,” Remus said. His friend only waved him off. Remus looked out at the damp, lamplit street. Rain drizzled onto his hair from the dark sky above as his head pounded. He reached down and grabbed his best friend by the arm and pulled him to his feet.
“We gotta go home, Si,” he said, putting Simon’s arm around his shoulder as they crossed the street.
“Noooo,” Simon groaned, petulantly. He hung off of Remus, dragging his feet through the puddles.
“Yes. Y’know she’s gonna kill me if I get home this late looking like I crawled out of the gutter. And it’ll only be worse if I bring you with me,”
“Jean likes me,”
“Jean doesn’t like drunk teenagers at her door covered in muck in the middle of the night,” Remus said, sounding a bit too much like a mother for his own taste. He paused. “But yeah, she likes you.”
Simon let out a giggle followed by a drunken hiccup.
“Seeeeee, rocket man?… she likes me…”
Remus was confused at this nickname but didn’t question it, chalking it up to drunken ramblings. As expected, Simon continued his giggling and yammering through the dreary rain as Remus led him down their familiar streets in the direction of Simon’s dad’s flat. As they neared the corner of his block, Remus spotted a dark shape sitting on the steps of the flat.
“Simon, is that-”
“FREDDIE!” The dog came running down the steps, barking happily. Simon ran forward, stumbling. “Awwww, hi Freddie!” Alfred the dog was a stray that had been following Simon and Remus around for close to two years. Simon had grown especially attached to him, letting him stay at the flat and giving him his name with the unquestionable reasoning that “he just looks like an Alfred”. Freddie was a dull brownish gold colour, with wiry fur and big brown eyes. Simon adored him. He sat down on the pavement, scratching behind the dog’s ears while he panted contentedly. Remus grinned at him and knelt next to Simon, scratching Freddie’s side.
“Alright,” he said. “I gotta go, it’s late.”
“I’m not going,” Simon said, abruptly. He stood up.
“Going where?”
“In there,” he said, pointing to the flat.
“Si, you can’t stay with me, I told you,”
“Fine, but I’m not going in there. Can’t stand my bloody father, I don’t need anymore fucking bloody teachers asking about bruises right at the beginning of school. I’ll sleep in the park.” Remus glanced into the window of the flat. No lights were on.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Remus asked.
“Dunno… Not since June at least. But it’s probably only because I’ve been staying at yours,”
“He’s not there, the lights are out. Maybe he’s off somewhere. Staying with a friend.” Simon was silent for a moment and glanced up at the door. Freddie whined.
“You’re coming in with me,” he said. It was a statement, not a question. Remus nodded and led the way up to the door. Just in case, he knocked first and waited for a moment, listening. No sound came from inside.
“You got a key?” he asked. Simon fished a small brass key out of his pocket and handed it over. Remus fit it into the lock and swung the door open.
It was dark inside the living room. The only light coming from a street lamp outside a thinly curtained window. An armchair, couch, and coffee table sat facing a small dusty fireplace, looking ghostly in the dim light. Freddie trotted straight inside without any fear and Remus followed him, past the kitchen and bathroom which were both empty. He reached a small bedroom and slowly pushed the door open. Simon’s room. It was empty. He moved to the last door, his father’s room Remus assumed, and pushed the door open slowly. Empty. He walked to the closet and checked it just in case, finding it empty as well.
He turned around to see Simon standing in the doorway looking uncharacteristically small with the dog standing next to him.
“No one’s here,” Remus said.
“Okay,”
They looked at each other for a moment and it crossed Remus’ mind that this was the last time he was going to see him for a while. Simon seemed just as aware of it.
Remus looked away and forced a cough. The silence was too loud.
“I should go,” he said. “It’s late, and you know how she is,”
“Yeah, okay,”
Remus walked past him and out into the living room. He could hear Simon’s footsteps following him. He turned around at the door and looked his friend in the eye.
“You have the number, okay? You call the school,”
“I will. But don’t call here, just wait for me to call you,” Simon said. Remus nodded and hugged him. They stayed like that for a moment and Remus spoke into his shoulder.
“If things get really fucked up, you can still go to my house, you know. I won’t be there but she really wouldn’t mind.”
“I know, don’t worry.” Freddie let out a booming bark and jumped on the two, desperate for attention. Remus pulled away, chuckling, and opened the door.
“Give that damn dog a bath,” he said. Simon grinned.
“I’ll try,” he said. As Remus stepped out into the street and the door was swinging shut behind him, he just got Simon’s last few words. “Don’t let those posh ninnies turn you boring, Remus!”
He couldn’t help but smile as he turned down the street. As he walked, fragmented memories of the night came back to him:
Remus sat in the booth with Simon and some friendly strangers playing poker with bottle caps as chips. Over the laughter and conversation he could just hear the radio station playing at the bar. A piano progression and a soft voice caught his ear and he listened for a moment.
“Shhh!” he told the people in the booth. “What song is this?” They all stared at him stupidly, too drunk to care whatever the song was. He could just hear the voice float over the crowd…
I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space…
On such a timeless flight
Remus punched Simon in the arm.
“Elton John!” he said, displaying a level of enthusiasm sober Remus would have scoffed at. As the song reached its first chorus, Remus Lupin started singing at the top of his lungs.
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Till touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
Burning out his fuse up here alone
By the time the chorus ended, the rest of the people in the booth had started singing with him. Simon grinned at him.
“Quite the choir boy, aren’t you, Remus!” The rest of the table laughed and Remus scowled. “Aw, c’mon,” Simon said. “Give us a real show!” Remus’ embarrassment quickly faded.
“Is that a challenge, Si?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s a fucking challenge. You won’t do it.”
“Fine.”
Remus crawled up onto the table and rose to his feet, swaying slightly and grinning like a maniac. He reached down and picked up a beer bottle from the table before doing a spin, sending cards and bottle caps flying everywhere. As the second chorus came around, he brought the bottle up to his face like a microphone and began to sing (horribly), pouring all of his emotion into the words.
“And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Till touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
OH! NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!”
As Remus sang, regardless of how awful it sounded, he heard the people all around him (in his booth and beyond) begin to sing with him. He felt all of the voices filling his chest. As though he had been an empty glass, suddenly filled with ice cold water. In his dazed state, he thought to himself just how great it would be to be the rocket man. He imagined that he was in space, a real rocket man. On his own spaceship, just him and maybe Freddie for company, with the most impossible view. Maybe it was just ridiculous drunken rambling. Or maybe it was the perfect fantasy. Maybe he’d meet Ziggy Stardust in the sky. Somewhere where stupid boarding schools and dead-beat fathers didn’t exist.
By the end of the song, half of the pub was singing.
Remus collapsed into the booth next to Simon. The boy looked back at him incredulously.
“I have no words,” he said. Remus smiled smugly and sighed.
“I fuckin’ love that music, Si,” Remus replied, grinning stupidly. Simon snorted.
“Yeah I can see that, Jagger.”
The memory made Remus shrivel with embarrassment. Simon’s nickname from earlier made a little bit more sense. Regardless of his embarrassment, he couldn’t deny that it was the perfect last night in London: memorable. And he knew Simon would bring it up constantly.
As he made his way through the dark streets in the direction of the tube, he worried over what he would meet when he got home. He and his aunt hadn’t been on the best of terms since she had told him about his plans for the school year. He only hoped she would be more forgiving as it was his last night.
Remus took the tube back to his neighbourhood further into the suburbs of the city. He got off just a block from his aunt’s flat and strolled through the darkness, accepting his fate. He entered through the front as gingerly as possible. But as he stepped over the threshold, taking care not to step on the squeaky boards, he spotted a light on in the kitchen. He tried heading straight to his room but as soon as the door shut behind him, he was caught.
“Remus?” Remus scrunched up his face, mentally preparing himself for whatever was to come, and stepped into the kitchen.
“Hi, aunty,”
Jean Howell turned around from where she was facing the sink. Her light brown hair was streaked with grey and pulled back into a limp ponytail. Her face was lined and worn, a map of all her worries and care for her loved ones. Her blue eyes were exactly like her sister (Remus’ mother), Hope’s. Or so Remus could tell from his vague memories of his mother and the pictures around the flat. Jean had taken him in when he was four years old, immediately after his mother had died of early-onset Alzheimer's. Lyall, Remus’ father, had been driven past all reason after seeing his wife slowly lose memory of him and had turned to the stingy pubs of east London. After some court proceedings, Remus had moved in with Jean. Who now, eleven years later, stood in front of him looking tired and not quite as fierce and she had once been.
She looked back at him, as though she were too tired to even be irritated.
“‘Hi aunty?’ That’s all?” Remus looked down at his feet, torn between guilt and anger, and didn’t say a word. He heard her sigh. “Remus, you’re supposed to leave tomorrow for school. Well I suppose that’s today now. You can’t be this irresponsible, you know how difficult it was for me to get this opportunity for you, to go to this school-”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Remus cut in, failing to control the edge to his voice. He remembered the night early in the summer when he stood outside the door of Jean’s bedroom, listening to her phone call to his father:
“C’mon Lyall you owe him that much,” Jean said. “Just put in a good word, you’re an alumni, I don’t know if I can get him in any other way.”
“He’s fine where he is, isn’t he?”
“No, he’s not. He’s skipping school, knocking about in the wrong parts of town. You would know that if you were ever here.”
“Not this again, I’m busy.”
“Bullshit, Lyall. You haven’t been busy in eleven years.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s one phone call.”
“It’s not my problem.”
“Lyall…”
There was a moment of silence. Remus waited outside the door, trying to control his breath as his chest rose and fell quickly.
“Fine.”
Remus heard the line click and a sigh from Jean. He pushed open the door. Jean turned to face him, startled.
“Sorry, Spidey, I didn’t know you were home.” Remus’ brow furrowed.
“Don’t call me that.” Jean tilted her head at him just slightly, a look of concern spreading across her face.
“What’s wrong?”
Remus looked away, walking to the bookshelf and running his fingers along the spines, desperate for something to do with his hands. He could feel his control slipping.
“I don’t need him,” he said. He turned and saw Jean’s face riddled with confusion. “We don’t need him.” She softened.
“It’s just a phone call, it doesn’t mean anything-”
“Yes it does! I don’t want any favours from him. He doesn’t get to have that kind of power over us.”
“I didn’t know what else to do, Remus, I’m just trying to get you out of here,” she said, throwing up her hands incredulously.
“I’m fine here!”
“No. I hate to pull this card, but I’m your guardian and I have the final say in this house.” Remus looked away again. He hated fighting with her.
“We don’t need his help,” he said, softly, refusing to make eye contact. “It’s always just been us. That’s all we need.” Jean sat down in an armchair next to the phone.
"Not this time,” she said simply. Remus looked at her with daggers in his eyes, and left the room.
That was the last time the two had spoken on the subject other than terse conversations of practicality on what he needed to bring with him and his travel plans.
“We’re not going to agree on this,” she said. “Are you packed?” Remus nodded, silently, thinking of the half empty trunk in his bedroom. “Okay, then you need to go to bed.”
He turned and started down the hallway to his room, the weight of the day hitting him.
“Remus?” He turned. He could just see her face dimly lit in the kitchen. “I love you.” He blinked, the words washing over him uncomfortably.
“I love you too,” he said, as loudly as he could manage. He turned around and shut the door behind him, leaning against it with his eyes closed. He could still feel the dull thumping in his head as he crossed the room to the record player he had kidnapped from the living room. His record collection was scant and it didn’t take him long to find his favourite: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Remus slid the vinyl from its sleeve and placed it on the turntable before carefully dropping the needle into place. There was a moment as the stereo crackled before the drum kit of Five Years faded in. He had it turned almost all the way down so as not to alert his aunt. Remus returned to his bed where his trunk sat half-empty and listened as the first guitar strum of the song vibrated from the turntable.
Pushing through the market square
So many mothers sighing
News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
Remus folded up all of his t-shirts and jumpers into the trunk as well as a few sets of the school uniform: a simple white button up, black trousers and jacket, a grey sleeveless jumper, and red and gold striped tie to represent the house he would be joining, Gryffindor. For a brief moment his mind skipped to the next day; joining the house, meeting his roommates. The thought made him sick and he pushed it away. He crossed his bedroom to the shelf against the wall where the turntable sat and reached into the shelf below it to pull out a stack of The Amazing Spiderman comic books. His obsession with Spiderman as a little kid was the source of Jean’s nickname for him, Spidey. Regardless of not having even opened the comics in at least four years, Remus packed them anyway. Along with the comics he grabbed the few books he had “borrowed” from the local library. As he placed the comics and books in his trunk, he looked back to the shelf and noticed one book left. The realisation hit him that it was his mother’s. He had hidden it away, too scared to look at it. He picked up the book and flipped it over to look at the cover. It was a battered copy of Peter Pan. It was the only book that he had saved before the rest of her things had been sold or donated. He vaguely remembered pulling it out of a cardboard box by the door at four years old, determined to finish reading it. It was her favourite. Hope had loved to read. He knew this to be true mostly from stories that Jean had told him but also from a few faint memories of his mother reading in an armchair at their old house outside of London.
Without really realising what he was doing, Remus tucked the book into his trunk before quickly covering it with an old jumper. The throbbing in his head intensified now accompanied by a sharp pain in his knees and ankles. Must have fallen at the pub, he thought. He went back to the shelf where a bottle of painkillers sat. He dropped a few into his palm and swallowed them with a wince. He turned to look at himself in the mirror. His hair was a mangled mess and his Beatles t-shirt and shorts hung off his bony frame. His hazel eyes gazed back at him showcasing a dry glare that always seemed to plague his face. Across the bridge of his nose was a diagonal white scar. Old enough to have faded slightly, but new enough to be noticeable. He had gotten himself punched a summer ago, trying to break up a fight Simon had started. He had never quite decided how he felt about the scar. Part of him hated it, but another part of it loved it. It reminded him of Simon.
Unwilling to look at his reflection any longer, he glanced back over to his trunk trying to remember what else he was missing. Ah of course, he thought. The contraband. He grabbed the few vinyls left on the shelf and tucked them under his arm before reaching under his bed to his stash of illegal substances. He slid a cardboard box out from under the bed containing a few packs of cigarettes he and Simon and nicked from different shops, a baggy of hand rolled ones, a bottle of vodka (also nicked), and a few spliffs from a fence at school. Remus transferred the contents into his trunk and added the baggy of cigarettes Simon had rolled earlier that day.
As if a switch had been flipped, Remus felt a heavy fatigue settle over him. He dragged the trunk off the bed and collapsed onto it. As he laid there on the bed, still fully clothed and eyes half open, David Bowie’s voice floated through the room towards him.
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
‘Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
Remus shut his eyes, a falling sensation coming over him as the sleep began to hit him. He murmured the lyrics, dazedly, thinking of nothing other than the soft music.
He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie…