Tan Lines on the Cruise Ship

On the night Remus Lupin almost died, it was James Potter that helped calm him down.

Maybe the term died was a teeny bit of a stretch, but Remus liked to think he knew death. The Syrian civil war taught him nothing but death. He never really had a great idea of what he wanted to do after he finished high school, but he knew signing up for the military was not it. Even so, after a few years of serving he found he just couldn’t sleep at night. Some shitty nightclub near him was hiring bouncers and he got the job with almost no qualifications because the words Marine Corps on his resume seemed to attract lots of nightclubs in the city. He worked his way up the club chain for a few years until he secured a spot at one of the most prestigious (if you can call it that) nightclubs in Bristol: Miss Cherry. Miss Cherry is where he met James Potter - annoyingly lovely for a bouncer.

Miss Cherry is also where he met James Potter’s best friend, who gave him a mini heart attack in their first interaction. So you could say that it was the night Remus Lupin almost died twice.

⊹₊ ⋆

Remus’ work was usually the same every night: bodies slicked with sweat, colourful lights, music you could feel thumping in your tailbone all the way up the length of your spine. He had been assigned to the doors that night, alongside James, which meant he allowed or denied certain people entry. It had only been two hours since his shift started. Two hours of bouncing was light work. James’ gold wristwatch told Remus that it was 12:04 in the morning.

In a whirl of skin-tight leather pants, smoke clouds, and the smell of weed, two people inched up the line and handed their IDs to James and Remus respectively. Remus got the shorter one’s ID. His height was 167 cm. Birthday on the third of November (what his mother would consider a Scorpio). Name… Sirius Black.

Remus automatically glanced back at the boy before him. “Are you really twenty?”

“Yes,” Sirius said.

Sirius’ voice came out slow and giggly because he was obviously high. Remus was winded at the sound of it.

“Right. I find that hard to believe. Step off the-”

“Wait, wait,” James’ voice cut in.

The minute Sirius’ pink eyes caught sight of James he illuminated with happiness. Almost like a star bursting in real time.

“I know him, mate, it’s Sirius! He’s twenty. C’mon, pass through,” James said.

Sirius shot James a delayed smile, his eyes trailing to Remus as if to say, I told you so.

Remus whispered as best as he could to James whilst keeping his eyes on the cue. “You’re friends with that one?”

“ ‘Course. He’s a bit tricky, he doesn’t really look twenty. But I celebrated his birthday with him back in the fall,” James explained.

“Were you all high like that at his birthday?”

“Yes, what else are you supposed to do for someone’s twentieth?”

Remus shrugged. In all fairness, his twentieth birthday he’d spent with a gun in his hands. These gaps in his adolescence made it hard for him to truly forget about the war. People talked incessantly to him about losing their virginity, drinking alcohol, getting their driver’s license. All these early-adult milestones passed Remus right by while he held his breath and prayed he’d live to see another day.

Other times, he only did the first part.

After yet another hour Remus’ eyes flickered to James’ watch. 1:23. The cue was still so fucking long - how people had the patience to wait in the humidity of the evening for hours at a time, Remus had no clue. He was lucky the doors were always ajar, and the opening area was air conditioned. Other than that the club was all sweat and humidity and bodily energy coursing through non-stop. It was sickening at times, yes. But Remus could watch it all night. There was something sort of thrilling about watching all these people interact with one another in all the ways Remus never did, and never would. He lived vicariously through them.

The hairs on his arms stood up slightly when his earpiece buzzed in his ear. Shell shock ran through him whenever a loud sound took place around him. But to have it in his ear was worse.

“Remus? We need you on the inside now, one of our guys had crack blown into his face and he’s not fit to work the rest of tonight. Be wary of the druggies.”

His stomach fizzed excitedly. It was like a little promotion every time they let him work the inside.

He explained the situation to James and let him take care of the ever-growing line. Once his partner was caught up to speed, he entered the club.

It looked as if Remus would have to talk to his boss about letting less people into the club at a time. Perfumes and pheromones left him feeling as dizzy as the last guy. It was an experience, though. Remus spotted a group of girls who had gone to town on their bodies with roll-on glitter. In gay clubs especially there were always the flamboyant people. Just to his left there was somebody in skin-tight black leather.

But that skin-tight leather struck a chord in his memory. Whose pants were those? When the owner of the pants whirled around and nearly crashed into Remus he knew. When the boy’s pink, lidded eyes stared at him for a few seconds too long he knew. He knew, and he felt as if he’d known this face for a lifetime. He instinctively pressed a hand onto Sirius’ back, guiding him back towards the crowd and straightening him out.

This seemed to snap Sirius out of whatever kind of daze he was in. “Sorry,” he shouted over the music he had been dancing to moments ago.

Remus only held up a hand in response as if to forgive.

With anybody else, that would trigger the end of a conversation. But Remus simply couldn’t shake this twenty-year-old-Sirius. He lingered in the bouncer’s peripheral vision, danced his way beside him and “bumped” into him several other times that night. This was okay, because Sirius was drinking and Remus was meant to be there to block Sirius from tripping onto any of the other bodies. This was okay, because Remus was strong enough that he could get this little punk out of his mind. Or so he prayed.

“Sorry,” Sirius said on the third bump, his vodka sloshing onto the sleeve of Remus’ shirt.

Remus grasped Sirius’ shoulder firmly to help with his dizziness. He leaned down low and got to eye-level. “You should really only be sorry if you’re doing that on purpose.”

Remus couldn’t tell if the pink in Sirius’ cheeks was the fault of the alcohol, the dancing, or something else entirely. Or maybe it had been there all along, and if so, what a beautiful thing to happen to somebody. Eternal blush…

“Doing what?”

“Bumping into me.”

“I’m not,” Sirius shouted over the escalated volume of gay pop.

“Isn’t this the third time you bumped into me?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Bumping into you, on purpose,” Sirius admitted.

And like an infection, Sirius passed his redness onto Remus.

“Might want to watch yourself in that regard,” Remus snapped.

“Will you carry me out if I bump into you again?”

“I can promise you, you aren’t that special that I’ll need to devote that much attention to you.”

This was a cruel lie and Remus knew it. Obviously Sirius was a diva. Maybe it was his outfit, but everything about him sent Remus’ train of thought to the stars. His leather pants had silver stars lining the outer leg, and his baby tee had a fucking silver star on the front to match. Remus wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if Sirius had been a beauty pageant kid. He probably won every single one.

And Sirius had to be the name of a constellation or something. Remus would have to ask his mum on another one of his visits to her. She’d know some hippie dippy bullshit like that.

“Ouch,” Sirius replied, but the smile on his face lingered like the blush on his cheeks.

He was a star and he fucking knew it.

“You know, you shouldn’t say anything too mean to me,” Sirius said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. I’m riding home with you and James.”

Oh.

“So you are,” Remus said almost stupidly. “Try not to throw up on my clothes on the ride home. You’ve already done enough damage.”

He pointed to the now-drying vodka on his shirt sleeve. Sirius looked only a little guilty for that. It wasn’t like Remus was actually pissed, but his gut told him to carry on a conversation with this boy for as long as possible.

It wasn’t always a great philosophy. One of these times he would end up saying something he’d regret.

“I hold back my alcohol really well, I swear,” Sirius protested.

“Not when it’s in cups.”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said, his hand grasping the fabric of Remus’ wet shirt cuff to inspect the damage.

“I think you’ve said those words enough tonight. Go on, go have fun.”

“I am having fun.”

“Well don’t let me get in the way,” Remus replied, stepping back a little.

He let Sirius drown all alone in the seas of people, all of which were singing horrible versions of a Mariah Carey song that Remus didn’t know.

Remus was beginning to learn that there were a lot of things he didn’t know. He didn’t know what it was like to achieve all these things like graduating college or buying his first car.

And he definitely didn’t know Sirius Black. So why was he so drawn to him?

Once Remus was left to his own thoughts after pushing Sirius away, he basked in the shade of an area untouched by the bright city-like lights. He’d almost forgotten the feeling of loneliness for a second. But it followed him around wherever he went, and even came in a travel size for whenever he went far from home.

He thought the loneliness had settled with him for good… but something cool and pointy stabbed the flesh of his arm, provoking a sharp yelp from the tall boy. He quickly turned around and knocked the lights out of his pursuer with his good arm, bringing his bad arm in and shielding it. A look down at the man he’d punched confirmed that Remus had been stabbed with a knife. In his arm.

“Fuck,” he seethed, watching as blood spilled down the back of his upper arm and onto the outskirts of the dance floor. A few inches over and he would’ve been stabbed right in his spine. The thought alone killed him, making his insides squirm up.

Remus did the only thing he could think of at that moment. He broke his way through dancing groups until he found the head of black, shoulder-length hair from earlier. He tapped on the boy’s shoulder.

“Sirius,” Remus said, voice raspy. He hated himself for this.

Sirius’ eyes looked hopeful for a moment before he clapped a hand to his mouth upon seeing the state of Remus’ arm.

“Can you get James? Tell him to just… tell him to tell…”

Loathing. Sheer loathing.

“Do you have a driver’s license?” Remus rephrased.

“On me?”

“Or in your car, but what I really need to know is if you just have a lice-”

“Yes. Come.”

The two sped to Sirius’ car which was parked right beside the one Remus would have taken home if it weren’t for the circumstances: James’ Porsche 911 Carrera. Sirius dutifully opened Remus’ door for him and practically shoved him inside just before hopping into his own seat. He grabbed Remus’ seatbelt and made sure it was fastened.

“The hospital, right?” he asked, still quite close. He could reach out and touch Remus if he really wanted to, and who's to say he didn’t?

“Yeah.”

Sirius’ Doc Marten pressed promptly on the gas, getting them to the nearest hospital with an apparent GPS in his head. Remus didn’t really care about any of this GPS fuss as long as this kid knew where he was going.

Kid. He scolded himself for thinking like that. This “kid” was only four years younger than him, after all.

If Remus had hated himself before, he really would have killed himself at this moment. As his arm went limp by his chest like a T. rex he removed his shirt and wrapped it around the injury to prevent the blood flow from staining any of Sirius’ really nice, expensive leather. Sirius had a shit ton of leather installed all throughout his car, and on the seats was a nice touch. Remus’ eyes trailed to Sirius’ pants (even more leather) and back up to his face. His eyes specifically were dipped in concentration, which Remus stopped to appreciate despite the dull stinging in his arm. No amount of pain could take away his ability to appreciate things. Like coffee, or sunrises, or getting new tattoos. Maybe he ought to start thinking like this. He held his breath and pretended that the pain was a bunch of tiny, coloured needles weaving their way into a nice design - a tattoo. Just another on his arm.

“What the fuck happened?” asked Sirius.

“I got stabbed. It’s not really uncommon for a job like this, was just a nasty shock.”

“Didn’t you call the cops on the guy who stabbed you?”

“I didn’t think of it. I’ll get James to, I guess. Injuries just…” he quit his train of thought and stopped talking because that was usually easier.

“You never act as calm as you’d like to in those kinds of situations,” Sirius helped.

Remus nodded.

“And I’ll call James.”

Sirius’ fingers tapped a few buttons on the screen of his Volkswagen Beetle, toying around until he reached James’ contact information.

Buzzing, buzzing, beeping.

He called again.

Buzzing, buzzing…

“Hello?”

“James, it’s Sirius. Your friend is injured, somebody stabbed him. Call the cops, alright?”

“What? Rem- uh, Remus got stabbed?”

“Yeah,” Remus’ voice rumbled the interior of Sirius’ car.

“Fuck. Okay. Okay, yeah. I’ll call the cops right now, thanks.”

Another beep.

“Your name’s Remus?”

Remus nodded again. “Unfortunately.”

Despite the situation Sirius laughed. Despite the situation Remus liked it - it wasn’t overly giggly like his high laugh. It loosened up the tension in his body and eased him into a state of weak calm.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means my mom’s a hippie and she wouldn’t name me something normal.”

“Try my name,” Sirius remarked, snarky.

“But your name’s to do with stars, isn’t it? Something cool like that.”

“It is a star itself. The biggest one in the whole sky.”

That checks out, thought Remus, and he nodded to himself. “Why don’t you like it?”

“Too out-there. But in my family it fits right in - I have family members named Andromeda and Regulus, so we’re all like one big galaxy,” Sirius answered, tone laced with sarcasm.

“Ah. Wouldn’t you want to be named after the biggest star, though?”

“Nah, not really. Gives me some big personality I have to live up to, y’know?”

“I’m sure you do just fine.”

Sirius laughed again, and Remus was sure he could spot a flash of something sparkly and white outside his window. Sirius.

Sirius pulled into the hospital’s parking lot and made sure to get out before Remus to help him out. His personal chauffeur.

“I’m not a cripple,” Remus mumbled.

“You will be if you go any slower. C’mon, we have to get you stitched up.”

Remus’ stomach sank at the prospect of having needles weave through the skin of his arm, with threads and not just ink.

After Sirius waited in the main lobby with Remus, waited for a professional with Remus, and waited all by himself patiently outside the doors as they drugged Remus up and worked on his arm, James finally arrived at 4:18 in the morning.

He himself smelled of alcohol and sweat but neither were his own.

“Sirius,” James called, making a beeline for him.

“He’s getting his arm done right now. That’s where he got stabbed, just his arm. He’s probably doing alright.”

“Okay.”

The two took adjacent spots on the benches outside a few rooms and did some more waiting. The pair waited so long that when Remus finally slid the door to his recovery room open, they flung themselves at him like two parents rekindling with a child who’d gotten lost in a mall.

“Remus!” James exclaimed, checking which arm had the stitches before pulling him into a one-sided hug.

“Are you okay?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, ‘m fine. I should probably go home.”

“You’ll stay with us tonight,” James interjected.

“What?”

“It might not have hit you yet, but you got stabbed tonight.”

“I’m aware,” Remus barked.

“But the shock hasn’t hit you yet. Stay with us, in case you need the support.”

Annoyingly lovely James Potter.

“Okay, okay.”

Remus huffed and allowed himself to be pampered all throughout the way home.

“Have you ever been here?” James asked as he unlocked the door to his apartment.

Remus shook his head.

“I’ve been a bad friend for that,” James admitted. “It’s a little messy, and it’s always cold, but it’ll do for just one night. We have spare blankets and everything.”

James seemed especially proud to have added this little feature to his homely apartment.

And homely was definitely the right word. There were about seven different cookbooks taking up more space than actual utensils on his kitchen island. A stack of quilts left no room for a real human on one of James’ chairs. The lighting was dim and inviting. Remus felt a sleepiness wash over him like the drowsy tide of a beach at night. Slowly, slowly, slowly…

He rubbed his eyes and before he knew it James was prepping a makeshift bed for him on the longest couch he had. Remus knew that even on that couch he’d have to severely fold up his body to fit.

And out of nowhere Sirius popped right beside Remus, leaning up to whisper in his ear. “Wait till you meet his mum, you’ll know where he gets all his housewife-ness from.”

Remus bit back a grin, swallowing it all the way down his throat.

“It is sort of brilliant. I’ll show up on his doorstep drunk as all hell and he knows exactly what to do with me. Never let him give you one of his hangover cures, though, they fucking reek and the taste is even worse,” said Sirius.

“Are you clubbing so often that you’ll just casually show up on his doorstep drunk?”

Sirius took his time crafting a response. “Yes and no.”

“There’s really only one answer,” Remus said, and he was quite sure he knew which of the two was the right one.

“It was my friend Marlene’s birthday today, that’s why I went,” he explained. “I usually vow to myself only to go clubbing if there’s a celebration to be had.”

“So you’ll just dig up one of your friends’ birthdays and get them to come clubbing with you as a celebration,” Remus said in what he hoped was a teasing tone.

He all-too-often shielded his real interest with harshness. Being enlisted in the military at eighteen meant that romantically-speaking he was at the lowest level he could possibly be, but he shamefully felt even lower than that. And it wasn’t as if his parents set a good example for him.

“Sure,” Sirius said with a smile. “When’s your birthday?”

Damn. Sirius was so good at that - so good at being a flirt so effortlessly. It rolled off of his shoulders and slipped unknowingly into the general area of whoever he was talking to.

“March 10th,” he said.

“That makes you a pisces.”

“I know.”

“So that makes you a very creative person, doesn’t it?” Sirius speculated.

“I’ve never created a single thing in my life.”

“Come on, you’ve never even made things for art classes? Like in primary school?”

“Wait no, you’re right. I made my father a clay mug for Father’s Day. I’m pretty sure I found it in the trash the next day,” Remus recounted.

It’s so easy to make Sirius laugh, Remus thought, just as the young star laughed for what was the fiftieth time that night.

“It’s all set up!” James exclaimed, and he was already onto his next project: making tea for the three of them.

“Well, night,” Sirius mumbled through a smile, retreating to his own bedroom.

“Night,” Remus replied.

He sprawled out on the couch and gathered all of the soft fabrics James had set out, bunching them around his legs comfortably. The tea James made tasted great that night and the sheets he covered himself with lulled him into his most peaceful sleep. Even his toothpaste tasted better than usual.

⊹₊ ⋆

Only seven hours later Remus found himself drinking coffee out of his tea mug from the previous evening. It had the faintest traces of herbal on the rim and he delighted in the combined taste of bitter coffee and sweet peppermint.

“I just don’t know if I want to do this anymore,” Remus huffed, his voice always settling at a low grumble in the mornings.

James wiped the fog from his dishwasher off of his glasses and reapplied them. “You don’t want to do what?”

“Bouncing at Miss Cherry.”

James nodded in consolation. “That attack was really scary, wasn’t it… I wasn’t even the one who got stabbed, but just calling the cops and seeing that guy’s knife coated with your blood. It was haunting.”

Remus urged that thought out of his mind and took a sip from his minty coffee.

“Are you gonna try and get a job at one of your old clubs? Or a new one?”

He took a minute to reply - he really didn’t feel like hurting James’ feelings. And he knew his next words might just be the kick-start to his and James’ loss of friendship. It wasn’t like James was going to unfriend him if he quit being a bouncer, but Remus knew that the less he saw of James the harder it would be to upkeep their interactions. Remus usually forgot about things like reaching out and keeping in touch with people. His mother was a victim of this. After all, his first priority was just trying to remember to get through the day.

“No, no. No clubs. It’s fun, but I can’t do it anymore. Getting a weapon pulled on me isn’t going to help me fight the flashbacks,” Remus alluded.

James caught on and promptly bit his tongue.

The awkwardness that followed their dip in conversation was interrupted by the soft footfall of a sleepy princess who had just awoken from her slumber.

Sirius Black.

He wore a fuzzy bridal robe like every morning was a cause for celebration.

“Good morning, princess,” James said smugly, handing him not a mug, but a teacup of coffee.

And Sirius pointed his pinky out.

Dear God, Remus thought.

“Come talk to me when your skin looks this shiny and the bags under your eyes magically dissolve,” Sirius replied. His own morning voice was a little higher and played into this little feminine side of him.

“I’ve told you this so many times,” James started. “I don’t need to buy 600 dollars worth of skincare products to-”

“You spent 600 dollars to get your skin to look like that?” Remus asked, incredulous.

Sirius turned his head towards him as if just acknowledging his presence. “Wouldn’t you?”

“No!”

“It’s all in my mum’s smoothie. She still won’t tell me what she puts in it, but all I know is that it works like a charm.”

“You know I love your mum, James. But her smoothies cannot compare to the power of Drunk Elephant.”

“What is a Drunk Elephant?” Remus asked.

“Oh, you have to let me do your skincare. What do you normally use?” Sirius said.

“Soap and water.”

Sirius’ pinky fell from its spot in the air.

“Good God, we need to save your skin.”

Sirius walked around the kitchen island, inspecting Remus’ face with care in his concerned eyes. He would have leaned in and touched the taller boy, if he could have reached him. And if the morning had served him a bit more confidence.

“I can’t wear skincare products, they’d probably be too itchy for me,” Remus protested.

“You’ve never tried Drunk Elephant,” Sirius rebutted.

“That’s true, but I doubt skincare products are going to do much good anyway. They won’t be able to hide my scars, and makeup is too itchy for that. I’ve tried it before.”

Sirius faltered for a moment. “Makeup’s the same, though! You just have to find the right brands. I wear it all the time.”

Remus dreamt up images of Sirius’ pearly skin dipped in even more blush, or his eyelashes coated in silky mascara, or his lips in a glossy sheen. He shivered at each new thought. Sirius was like a pretty Adonis.

“But Remus is definitely not the princess type like you,” James said.

“Knights can still wear makeup. They wear it all the time in movies.”

A knight. Remus liked the idea of it, he had to admit. He could be somebody’s knight in shining armour. He’d been Syria’s knight in shining armour.

James glanced at his gold wristwatch and back up at Sirius. “You better be off, mate, your work starts soon.”

The midnight blue fabric of Sirius’ robe swayed after him as he left the room.

“Are you gonna come to work tonight?” James asked.

“Not tonight.”

⊹₊ ⋆