i called you
It was Thursday evening. Lily had tickets for the Sirius Black concert on Saturday, which was all and well, but the problem was that Remus hadn’t been able to get a hold of Lily in the past two weeks. She wasn’t answering her phone or her email. Remus had gone as far as calling her agent, whom he was acquaintances with, to ask if she had heard from Lily. Remus had gone to the restaurants she went to weekly and asked if the staff had seen Lily. He had shown up to her apartment, but no one had opened the door. No one had seen her. No one had heard from her, and Remus was getting worried.
Now, Remus had known Lily for a long time. Whenever she got particularly motivated about a book, she would hole up in her apartment and not answer the phone for days. But even then, she typically got so much work done that she would send something to her agent. And that was only for days. It had been a little over two weeks since Lily had answered any of Remus’ texts or calls.
He felt like a shitty friend. Usually, when Lily fell off the grid, Remus would get through to her after a few days. But he had been so busy the days before he left for Cornell and then had been immensely busy the week he was there, too. He had guest lectured at least one class a day and then met up with James, whom he was quickly growing to like or saw Regulus.
It felt a bit like he was cheating on Regulus the way he was sneaking around with James. Remus knew Regulus would not have liked it, but he was also a grown man who could make his own decisions. Also, he was in no shape or form dating Regulus, contrary to the media’s opinions occasionally. Remus had been paying close attention to James, and as far as he saw, James was not fucking up the movie or Regulus’ reputation in any way. According to most of the cast Remus had spoken with when he went to pick up Regulus, James was a good actor. In his observation, Remus had never seen James do anything mean to Regulus. Remus was almost certain James was actually a nice guy.
Over the past week, James had never made a cruel joke or offended anyone. He was always kind to servers and smiled at little kids on the street. There was a part of Remus that screamed James was too good to be true; perhaps that was why Regulus hated him so dearly. The thing was, James Potter was not too good to be true; he was just good.
Coming to this realization, Remus felt even worse of a friend. Here, he was making other connections and meeting new people, but he forgot about his other best friend. When Remus returned to his apartment, he dropped his bags on the floor and dug around in his kitchen drawers to find the extra key Lily had given him.
Within less than a minute, Remus was out the door again, this time heading toward Lily’s apartment.
* * *
As he approached Lily's door, a chill or worry ran through Remus’ body every few seconds as he walked up the stairs to the sixth floor. The elevator had been broken, and he supposed it calmed his nerves slightly. While Remus doubted he would find Lily murdered, something must have been wrong.
He pulled the spare key from his pocket and walked to the end of the hall. Remus had seen this hall many times before. The paint was slightly chipped where the walls met the hardwood floor, like a piece of furniture had been knocked against it too many times. He had become familiar with the flickering lamp and the decorated door of Lily’s apartment. There were flowers of every kind. Remus recalled how he had helped Lily put the stickers up. Knowing Lily, she had probably read dozens of reviews and tested the product before putting them on the door.
As Remus fit the key in the lock and was about to push it in, the door directly to his left opened. Elodie, Lily’s neighbor, walked out. She was about half of Remus’ height, and her golden blonde hair reached down to her hips. Remus had met her a few times, though really only in passing. They knew each other's names and had occasionally conversed shortly. For example, he remembered talking about some popular movie that had come out at Lily’s housewarming. Though, they weren’t close friends and most likely never would be. It seemed Remus had caught her on her way out.
“Remus.” Elodie stopped halfway out the door. It wasn’t that there wasn’t kindness in her tone, but rather questioning of why he was there.
“Elodie. Hi.” He couldn’t believe his luck. If anyone would know if Lily had left to go somewhere, it was Elodie. Lily would have told Elodie to water her plants when she was gone. “Do you know where Lily is?”
She gave him a strange look. “No, I don’t.” Remus was about to admit defeat and wish her goodbye until Elodie spoke again. “She did leave in quite a hurry about two weeks ago.”
“Did she seem alright?”
Elodie paused to recall the last time she had seen Lily better. “I can’t explain it, but she was acting weird.” She studied the look on Remus’ face for a moment before giving him the best news he had heard all day. “Lily left a number to call if anything came up. Do you need it?”
“Yes,” Remus jumped at the opportunity without a single split second of hesitation.
Nodding, Elodie went back into her apartment. The door shut behind her, and Remus sighed in relief. He had a number now. He could reach Lily when it had been impossible to before. A moment later, Elodie returned with a slip of paper in her hands. She offered it to Remus, who took it gratefully.
“I have to go, but it was nice seeing you.” Elodie smiled as she began locking the door behind her.
“You too,” Remus replied, waiting until she was halfway down the hallway before he finally pushed the key into the lock and flung Lily’s door open.
He moved inside quickly and shut the door behind him. Okay, so Lily had left. That meant Remus wouldn’t find her body because she had been murdered. He moved around her apartment, looking for clues as to why she had left. Elodie had said she was in a hurry, which explained why her closet looked like she had grabbed random clothes and shoved them into a bag.
There was nothing else out of the ordinary, so he moved to the kitchen to get a glass of water before he called the number Lily had left. As he went to take a glass, a note on the counter that he had missed before grabbed his attention. It had his name written on the front in Lily’s handwriting. He abandoned every other thought and lept for that letter.
Remus ripped the envelope open, hoping to find an explanation. Instead, he was left disappointed. Two pieces of paper were in the envelope—two printed-out tickets to Sirius Black’s concert, which he and Lily were supposed to use. So she wasn’t planning on coming back before then. She had known she wouldn’t be back in over two weeks when she left.
Letting the papers drop, Remus pulled out his phone to call the number Elodie had given him. Sirius Black’s concert meant very little to him if his best friend was in danger.
The phone rang for what felt like an eternity until there was the unmistakable sound of someone picking up on the other side. “Hello, who is this?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
He faltered for a second from shock. Remus had expected Lily to pick up. “I’m Remus Lupin, a friend of Lily Evans’. I was told to call this number if I needed to get in contact with her,” he said, a twinge of confusion in his tone.
“She’s here. One moment,” the voice said, and Remus could tell that whoever had answered the phone did not want to play messenger between him and Lily.
A few minutes went by as the line remained silent. Remus almost thought that no one would come until there was a noise, and finally, a familiar voice spoke. “Who is this?” Lily asked, and Remus let out a very long sigh of relief at hearing her voice.
Then, the relief wore into anger. “Lily, what the absolute fuck? You can’t just fucking disappear for weeks and tell no one.” Remus fought hard not to scream through the phone because Lily would certainly hang up then.
“Remus,” Lily sighed, though it sounded a bit exhausted.
“Yeah, it’s me. Now, explain,” he demanded, though she wouldn’t listen.
“How’d you get this number?” she asked instead of giving a worthy explanation. She was hiding something. Remus knew she was.
“I ran into Elodie. Lily, what is going on? Are you okay?” Remus asked, the anger having tampered down. He was just as worried as he had been before, maybe more.
There was a deep breath over the phone. “I– I’m fine,” she replied, and Remus stayed quiet, waiting for her to go on. “Something happened with my family. I had to come back to visit.”
Her previous sentence might not have meant much to someone who wasn’t close to Lily. The thing was, Remus was very close to Lily. He had known her for years and years. And in those years, he could have counted the number of times she mentioned her family for more than a split second on one hand. He knew her parents were dead and had never heard of any other family of hers other than her sister.
“Is everything alright? You know you can tell me anything,” Remus said, softer than before.
Background noise became apparent through the line, and some intercom went off. He didn’t hear much but knew he heard the word patient. Lily was at the hospital.
“Listen, Remus, I have to–”
“Are you at the hospital?” he asked, if only pushing to make sure everyone was alive.
“I am,” Lily’s voice sounded thin and frail in a way Remus had never heard. She let out a sigh that sounded a lot like letting go of her need to keep everything she was going through a secret. “Petunia collapsed. They did a couple of tests, and they found a tumor. We don’t know if it’s cancerous yet.”
The air was pulled from Remus’ lungs. While Lily didn’t often speak of her sister, it didn’t mean that Remus was ever under the illusion that she didn’t care for Petunia deeply. The driving force between Lily and Petunia had been their parents.
“Do you need me to come? I’ll be on the next flight to wherever you are,” Remus offered because he knew how Lily was feeling. He knew how it felt to be in the hospital with a dying family member whom you weren’t sure if you hated more than you loved. It only made the grief that much harder to deal with. Then again, there was always a chance that it was benign.
Another deep breath. “No, there’s nothing you can do, Remus. Just enjoy the concert. I won’t be able to make it,” Lily said, but Remus pushed talk of the concert aside. It had been so important to him before, but it just seemed so trivial now.
“Lily,” Remus breathed. “You have to promise to keep me updated. Don’t isolate yourself because of this. And answer my goddamn texts.” He added lightly and was just short of overjoyed when she gave a slight laugh. “Promise me.”
“I promise I won’t ghost you again. Also, can you make sure the plants on the balcony are getting watered? I forgot to tell Elodie about those. They’re new,” Lily requested, and it made Remus feel better that he could do something to help Lily.
“I will,” he vowed.
“I do have to go, though,” Lily said quietly.
“You’re not alone,” Remus said because he knew it felt just like that.
“I know,” she whispered. “Bye.”
The call ended before Remus could reply. He was left to lower his phone onto the counter in Lily’s kitchen and drag a hand down his face. The only things flashing through his mind were his worry for Lily and images of Hope in the hospital. God, he really didn’t want to think about Hope anymore, so he picked up his phone and opened his messages.
He texted Regulus to tell him to be at Remus’ apartment in an hour and to bring a couple of bottles of wine. Regulus’ reply came within a minute as an uncapitalized okay.
Before he went back to his apartment, Remus left a note in front of Elodie’s door, telling her to water the plants on the balcony.
* * *
Not long after Remus got home, Regulus was at his door, a tote bag hanging from his hand. Silently, Remus moved out of Regulus’ way, who went directly to the kitchen and began pulling bottles of red wine from his bag onto the counter. Remus moved past Regulus to pull a corkscrew out of a drawer. He slid it over the counter closer to Regulus, then went to a cabinet to grab two wine glasses.
Regulus poured a glass, which Remus took before he was done pouring the other, and downed it in one go. He then placed the glass in front of Regulus again, who didn’t even blink before refilling it. With his own glass in hand, Regulus grabbed the open bottle and another before walking to the living room. After placing the bottles on the coffee table in front of the couch, he took a seat and then looked at Remus for the first time.
There had always been this understanding between them. Regulus didn’t talk about many things because he was secretive and preferred to work through things himself. Remus didn’t talk about many things because he actively avoided feeling some emotions and did his best not to think about them. Both of them knew these facts, so whenever it got a bit too hard to solve by themselves or run away, they took the silent support of the other. Then again, sometimes, they broke down; however, that may have looked.
Remus didn’t feel pressured to tell Regulus about how Lily was in the hospital or why she was. Remus didn’t feel pressured to tell Regulus how this made him think of how he had gotten a phone call out of the blue from a nurse to tell him how the mother who had abandoned him was in the hospital once. Remus didn’t feel pressured to explain or to say anything. But he wanted to. He wanted to tell Regulus, at least to tell him some of it. He was still running away from that bit about his mother. Remus had been from that for years, and he would continue to run.
“I finally got ahold of Lily,” Remus said almost quietly. He wouldn’t tell Regulus why. Lily hadn’t gone shouting it from rooftops for a reason.
Regulus nodded, taking a sip of his wine before he spoke. “Is she alright?” he asked, though it wasn’t an urgent question like it had been for Remus. He only cared because of the way the answer would affect Remus.
“She’s alive,” Remus responded, and Regulus nodded in a way that told Remus he knew precisely what Remus had meant by the words. Remus knocked back the rest of his glass and twisted his body to reach the table where the bottle was. “It’s a Thursday. Why are you in New York? Aren’t you supposed to be in Ithaca?” After filling his glass, he looked to where Regulus was lounging on the couch, his glass only half empty.
“I had all my scenes filmed by eleven today, and we have a long weekend this weekend, so I figured I’d come back early. It's a good thing I did, I guess,” he explained, not elaborating on why he came back early.
Remus knew there was a reason because Regulus typically made it a point never to leave filming early unless he needed to. Even when he didn’t have scenes to shoot, he helped on the directing side. Regulus had worked on enough films that had been significant successes and helped behind the screen that most directors and producers valued his opinions. Remus had heard about the occasional times when they didn’t.
It was then that Remus’ phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket to find a very concise text message from Lily telling him that the tumor they had found wasn’t cancerous and that she was going to stay with her for a week or two more. An instant wave of relief went through Remus because Lily wouldn’t lose her older sister.
Finally, Remus didn’t feel as guilty as he had to find another person to go with him to the concert. He would have stayed home, waiting for Lily to call. He would have flown to her if she had let him. It didn’t feel right that he would have been living his best life when his best friend’s sister was dying. But Petunia wasn’t dying. Still, he did want to check up on Lily in the morning. A scare was traumatizing enough.
“Lily got us tickets to this concert,” Remus said as he put his phone on the coffee table. “She’s not going to be able to make it.”
Regulus raised his eyebrows. “You want me to go with you?” he scoffed. Remus couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Regulus at a concert.
“It’s front row,” Remus tried to entice.
Already, Regulus was shaking his head. “I don’t know–”
“I’ll buy you a T-shirt,” Remus offered quickly. “And I’ll conveniently forget how your suitcase in Ithaca was half full of stolen sweaters.”
After a light laugh, Regulus sighed. “Fine, but I’m taking you up on that T-shirt,” he agreed.
A large, slightly wider than usual–probably due to the alcohol–grin took over Remus’ face. “Great. It’s on Saturday. I’ll come by yours at five.”
In their conversation about the concert and how Remus had tried to convince Regulus to go with him, he didn’t realize until later how he forgot to tell Regulus who the artist was. However, he doubted Regulus would care just who was singing. He wasn’t very into pop music and was only going because Remus needed someone to go with. Regulus probably wouldn’t care that it was a Sirius Black concert. After all, Remus doubted Regulus knew one song by him.