an orchestra isn't a band
Sirius
Sirius feels rather light-headed as the scary man with green hair and a lip ring runs his eyes smugly all over his body. He freezes involuntarily when Scary Man takes another confident stride towards him, feeling all too similar to how he would years ago back at that house in France he still has occasional nightmares about. Remus notices, somehow, from a few stools over, and doesn’t take it well. Sirius watches with far too many mixed emotions to discern properly as Remus’ eyes grow dark and he immediately rises from his seat, beginning to walk towards Scary Man, his gaze unwavering and unkind.
“Barty,” Remus warns in an intimidating, low tone, somehow pouring so much animosity and assertiveness into the name as he says it that Scary Man—Barty—falters for a second. Barty slows and blinks, his smirk fading from his face, and Remus reaches him, and then reaches for him. Sirius’ eyes widen further than they already were as Remus shoves Barty up against a wall aggressively, pinning him there with one arm, though he doesn’t struggle much.
“As long as you are here, in my shop, you will not say anything, do anything to make anyone uncomfortable,” Remus starts, speaking quietly yet the most serious Sirius has seen him in these past couple days, “You will not steal anything, you will not break anything, you will not attempt to sell anything, including the drugs I know are in your back pocket. Crouch, you so much as breathe in the wrong direction and I will make sure you look worse walking out of this door than you did the last time you were here, alright?” He threatens fiercely, and if someone asked Sirius what the colour of anything was at that moment, he would not be able to tell you because his eyes simply could not be dragged away from the glorious man that is Remus Lupin for the love of God.
Barty’s eyebrows tug together into a scandalised frown as he stares up at Remus, though, having quite a different reaction to his words than Sirius did.
“I was just going to ask the fucking hottie over there where he got his jacket from!” He reasons with annoyance, his voice climbing to a shout as Remus’ grip visibly grows tighter around him. In a fruitless attempt to prove his innocence, he gestures frantically as best as he can with his arms restrained over to Sirius, causing Sirius himself to raise his eyebrows and instinctively look down at the vintage leather jacket he basically hasn’t taken off since he bought it from some dodgy Ebay seller for a larger amount of money than he’d like to admit, and try not to grin at being called a ‘hottie’. When Remus doesn’t let go, the dangerous look in his eye only worsening, Barty eventually releases a frustrated growl and rolls his eyes. “Alright, fine! I’ll behave,” He huffs, relenting, and Remus lowers his arm, freeing Barty, but not without a final foreboding glare that he holds for a good few seconds as he speaks his last words of warning to him.
“And don’t call him a hottie,” He says, and turns around to walk back to his stool, a firm expression still on his face that would definitely morph into more of a scowl if he saw the small smirk slowly carving it’s way across Barty’s mouth as he straightens his clothes out.
“Yes, Father Lupin,” He muses, and for a moment Sirius thinks Remus might actually explode with anger, and is surprised when all he does is flick his eyes over to Barty with boredom, now sitting down again, just not reacting. That is until Sirius catches the tiny, amused smile on his lips when he turns his head away, presumably thinking no one is looking. Sirius feels that there is some key information he is missing about their friendship – if you can even call it that – dynamic. He’ll find out whatever it is in due course, there is no doubt about that.
That obnoxious laughter from a few minutes ago rings out again, making them all flinch, and Sirius realises with a start that it’s not coming from Barty, that it never came from Barty, and that the second set of footsteps he was walking with never entered the room with him. Mass confusion is evident as everyone seems to come to the same conclusion at the same time, and Barty narrows his eyes.
“Evan, what the fuck are you doing?” He yells, facing the corner that he emerged from earlier with a frown. The second-set of footsteps that is supposedly Evan starts moving again, growing closer and closer to them like he did before, though this time he actually makes it past the wall and into their line of sight. A man, about the same height as Remus, which is impressive, comes stumbling into the room. He’s got the same blonde dread-locked hair as Pandora does, yet his are significantly shorter as they hang just past his eyes whilst hers inch down to near her waist; he has a silver septum piercing that suits him massively, and—holy shit—some big muscles. Possibly even bigger than Remus’, which, again, is impressive. He’s wearing some sort of tattered navy jumpsuit that Sirius guesses is for his work, since he’s a carpenter and has come here to do just that – carpentry. Sirius’ lips quirk as Evan’s expression scrunches with laughter, the frankly terrifying noise coming from his mouth, the same one that kept sounding and carrying throughout the building before. Evan clutches his stomach, nearly doubling over, and that’s when Sirius notices the phone gripped in his hand, opened on some sort of colourful video. In his hysteria, he flails his arms about wildly, making it impossible for Sirius to identify exactly what the video is about, and why it’s causing him such hysterics in the first place. Barty stands and stares at him, arms folded and looking severely unimpressed as Evan, registering all the company he has, desperately attempts to compose himself.
“I–I’m sorry,” He breathes as he wipes tears of mirth out from under his eyes, standing up straight. “It’s just this Instagram reel, man,” He says and nearly bursts out laughing again until he thankfully stops himself, saving all of their ears. Barty takes the phone from his hand and squints at it, frowning and shaking his head after a few seconds of watching the screen.
“Fifteen minutes I’ve had to put up with your cackling and it’s not even funny,” He remarks, causing Evan to let out a disbelieving "What?", and walks over to Remus, though this time less intimidatingly. They all watch, intrigued, as Remus stares at the phone Barty is holding out for him, looking back up to Evan sceptically when the video ends.
“He’s right, it’s not,” He admits regrettably, and Evan’s face contorts into the most outraged, betrayed, unbelieving expression Sirius has seen in a long while, and he watched James realise someone had stolen his favourite cookies from their table at a cafe the other day.
The phone gets passed around, Evan’s jaw dropping lower as each person grimaces and agrees with Barty and Remus. Sick of the anticipation, Sirius has to refrain himself from snatching the phone off of James after he’s finished watching with a shake of his head and a desolate "Sorry, man,"
Let’s just say the wait was absolutely not worth it. Sirius can’t bring himself to say anything after that absolute time-waster of a video, his lips tightly pressed together as he wordlessly hands the phone over to Mary sitting beside him. Evan looks offended, just as he did with everyone else, until his expression clears into curiosity. Having experienced this moment about a hundred times over before, Sirius is almost confident that he is going to have to go through the whole ‘You’re Sirius Black, aren’t you?’ thing again, though in the twenty minutes that Remus was on the phone to Evan, surely he would have at least even vaguely mentioned who Sirius is?
“You’re French,” Evan declares suddenly instead with an accusatory tone, ruling out the possibility of it being a question, and points his finger at Sirius. Sirius blinks, a smile creeping onto his lips. He doesn’t have much of an accent anymore after living in England most of the time since he was eleven, so the fact that this man who he only met not even ten minutes ago can almost immediately tell that he’s French is wildly amusing to him.
“Yes, I am,” He replies, raising his eyebrows as Evan’s face lights up.
“Oh mon dieu, je ne trouve personne de français dans cette petite ville, je suis si heureux,” Evan starts rapidly speaking in perfect French and Sirius blinks again before breaking out into a full grin; he hasn’t been able to find a French person here in a long while, either, besides his brother, of course. Evan continues to ramble whilst walking off in the direction of where the broken shelf still hangs haphazardly, only turning around when he realises Sirius isn’t following him because he’s sort of frozen in shock, to say, “Tu viens, ou quoi?”
“Je viens,” Sirius replies, hopping off his stool quickly and shrugging in the direction of both James and Remus as he goes. Behind him, he hears someone else get up and turns briefly to see Pandora coming too. He frowns for a second before he realises that she must be French as well, if Evan is.
“Quoi? Je veux aussi participer à cette conversation,” She grins as she passes him, following Evan over to where he must have laid his toolbox out earlier, explaining the series of bangs. Sirius tugs a chair from underneath a nearby table and places it so he can easily talk to both Evan as he measures up what's left of the shelf carefully and Pandora as she does the same as Sirius. When it's silent, Sirius decides to start a new conversation between them with something he’s been wanting to ask.
“So, you and Barty…” He starts in a suggestive tone, forgetting to speak in French after being so used to having to speak in English to everyone all the time, and Evan turns his head to face him with a smirk.
“We’re going out,” Evan finishes for him, and Sirius nods. He probably could have guessed that – they do seem to make sense together. “Désolé si tu étais intéressé par lui, ou par moi, mais tu es toujours le bienvenu pour nous rejoindre un soir, si tu veux,” He adds with a wink and laughs at Sirius’ shocked expression.
“Je n'étais pas–je ne le ferais pas—” He stutters back, completely unsure of what to say to that, both Evan and Pandora’s laughter not helping him at all.
The conversation morphs into various different topics after this as Evan pulls odd, heavy-looking tools out of his kit that Sirius can’t even fathom what they would be useful for, and Pandora gives them all glasses of water, unprompted, that have some strange yellow powder mixed in with them that makes the drink taste sweet, yet still refreshing. Where she gets the ideas and resources for her wondrous creations, Sirius will never know.
“How do Barty and Remus know each other?” Sirius asks thoughtfully, twisting his rings around his fingers absently and Pandora hums.
“They were in a band together,” She replies and that was definitely the wrong time to choose to take a gulp of his water because he nearly spits it straight back out again, though he thankfully only just stops himself. Pandora shoots him a strange but amused look when his face contorts painfully as he does this, but politely doesn’t say anything, much to Sirius’ gratitude. He considers it lucky that Evan’s back was to them, his concentration focused on the shelf, because Sirius thinks that he definitely would have, unfortunately.
Hold on, Barty was in the band that Remus was in? Sirius thinks to himself once he’s swallowed his water and is no longer choking. He runs the thought through his head again. Barty was in the band that Remus was in. Wow, okay. So, that means that he was there, somewhere in the background of Dorcas’ concert videos playing along with Remus, and experiencing it all live, every single night that they performed. Oh, Sirius would kill to trade places with him. He might ask Dorcas to send him those videos later, just so he can live vicariously through them whenever he feels extra depressed about the fact that he’ll probably never get to see the same carefree, fucking feral Remus Lupin that is captured in them. Don’t get him wrong, as soon as he gets back to London he’s going to try everything he can to get Remus on a stage with him, and maybe even his own record deal if that’s what he wants because with the playing that Sirius saw in that video, he sure as hell deserves one. Sirius reckons that after their kiss (es) last night, he would do just about anything Remus wants, actually. It’s a strange, pathetic feeling to have that he never wants to go away, no matter how much the amount of control over himself that he’s already handed to Remus scares him.
Something clicks in his brain as he absently watches Evan fiddle with nimble looking screws that are apparently needed for this massive wooden shelf, somewhere or other. The repairing process of a shelf is the least of Sirius’ concerns, though. He’d say, actually, one of the most probing concerns he currently has is the fact that everybody keeps saying ‘was’ when they refer to the band; Remus was in a band, Barty was in the band too. But they never say why the band is a was, and not an ‘is’. He now knows, of course, why Remus is so different compared to how he was two years ago—fucking Gideon— but surely Remus deciding to get his life back on track after breaking up with him isn’t the main cause for a whole band to split up? Sirius is friends with people in bands that he’s met at various different events over the years, and therefore knows well the sense of family that most musicians find in a band when they’re in the right one, the feeling of belonging and undying loyalty, all knitted together with the unmistakable threads of music – that’s a feeling that doesn’t fade easily. There couldn’t have just been Barty and Remus in the band, too. Sirius knows that any group of people, no matter what size, can technically be a band if they want to be, but as far as he knows, neither Barty nor Remus can sing. And as far as he’s concerned, a band needs a singer, otherwise that’s basically just an orchestra. And an orchestra isn’t a band. And so, letting his undying curiosity get the better of him once again, he tries his luck asking just one more question, and risks the possibility that he’s run out of answers to be received for the day.
“What happened to the band?” Sirius tries his best to sound as casual and nonchalant as possible, pretending to examine his nails to support this act. He looks up when he hears a heavy sigh from Evan, and wonders whether he maybe shouldn’t have asked the question in the first place. He doesn’t have a right to know every single detail of Remus’ life, he knows, but he desperately wants to be able to understand him better – find out what makes him him, and why Sirius has fallen so quickly and hard for that certain him, like he never has for anyone before. Evan eyes him warily.
“Well, Remus was the guitarist, bloody amazing, he was – I’m guessing it’s him you want to know about?” Evan starts, smiling knowingly when Sirius’ eyes widen slightly at being called out so easily by someone he barely knows. Pandora stares at the table silently, her lips pressed into a thin line. Sirius doesn’t know what that means, and assumes that he’ll understand in a minute when Evan’s finished, an uneasy feeling settling in his chest telling him that this won’t be a totally happy story. “Yeah, it’s pretty obvious you like him, mate. Good on you, though, hope it works out. Anyway, Barty was a drummer, and they were both a bit wild, I guess, at the time. Drugs and shit,” Evan makes a face, drawing his eyebrows together, and Sirius’ sheepish grin from his previous comments fades, “So, the band was together for about... a year, maybe? Yeah, I wanna say a year. Things were going great, pretty popular, you know? Well, I guess you do,” Evan says with a small chuckle and Sirius resists the urge to bury his head in his hands, suddenly feeling unusually embarrassed of his fame, “Had some great nights performing, and it really seemed like it was going somewhere, but then Remus just completely withdrew from just–everything, and everyone after Gideon—,” Evan pauses, “You do know who Gideon is, don’t you?” He asks and Sirius nods, his lips twisting in anger that he’s trying so very hard to hold back at the mention of that man’s name, “OK, so Remus, he just kind of lost his spark for a while, which is understandable, but he couldn’t perform at all, really. And then his Dad got sick, which just made it all so much worse for him. And what’s a band without a guitarist, right?” Evan smiles meekly, a sadness to his eyes, “Then some… other stuff happened,” Pandora looks up. “And it just wasn’t the same, at all, so the band kind of got put on hold, and hasn’t been taken off since,” Evan finishes, and though his back is turned, Sirius can sense his obvious upset about it all. Suddenly Sirius understands Pandora’s solemn expression, and realises that he’s mirroring it. He’s unsure of what to say, but feels obliged to say something, since he’s the one who brought it all up in the first place.
“What was it like, watching them perform?” He asks softly, and Pandora laughs, finally breaking from her blank-faced trance. Evan turns around with a smirk on his lips and Sirius doesn’t understand what he said that was so funny. He was trying to be sentimental, for Gods’ sake.
“Well, considering we were up on stage with them, we wouldn’t know,” Evan replies, his eyes twinkling with mischief, and Sirius blinks surprisedly, feeling really fucking stupid. He flicks his gaze to Pandora for official confirmation that this is true and she nods, smiling affectionately.
“I played bass, still do, actually, and Ev was our lead singer,” She says, and Sirius remembers that his jaw is slightly dropped and promptly closes it again. Evan gives them a mock-bow as he picks up some sort of drill, grinning at the way Sirius is staring at him like he’s a whole new person.
“Never judge a book by its cover, Sirius,” He shouts over the brief, deafening whirring of the drill before he lobs it back into his toolbox carelessly with a loud crash that makes Sirius wince. “Remus can sing too, you know,” He adds casually, waggling his eyebrows, and Sirius has to refrain himself from gasping, knowing that that reaction would be a bit much, even though it perfectly reflects how he’s feeling inside. Oh my god, he needs to hear that man sing, he thinks eagerly to himself, already plotting elaborate plans on how exactly he could make that happen.
Just as Sirius is about to excuse himself to go and tell James this earth-shattering news—because he simply needs to tell someone, and who else?—Evan removes the plastic safety glasses he had been wearing and throws them into his toolbox along with the gloves he has just whipped off, sighing contently to himself. Sirius and Pandora watch inquisitively as he jumps off the last rung of the step-ladder he was balanced on, wiping his brow, and turns to them with a beaming face.
“Ta-da!” He sings, and damn, he is good, Sirius remarks internally and not just at singing because he waves his arms around in a flourish to reveal the shelf in one piece, looking exactly the same as Sirius remembers it from before it got snapped, not at all broken. Sirius and Pandora burst into immediate applause, to which Evan bows again, before he wanders off claiming loudly that he ‘needs a fucking drink’, despite it being just past nine-thirty in the morning. Pandora gets up to follow him back over to the breakfast bar where the others are still sitting, talking animatedly with one another, when she pauses, realising Sirius hasn’t moved.
“Tu viens?” She asks, raising her eyebrows, and this time, Sirius declines the offer.
“Non, je pense que je vais rester ici pour un peu,” He answers with a small, polite smile, to which she hesitates before nodding and walking away, leaving Sirius sat alone with just Evan’s toolbox to keep him company.
He looks around, exhaling slowly. He’s really going to miss this place, this day, these people when he has to leave soon. It feels like he’s already built himself the beginning of a new life here, one that he might just prefer to his old one. Instinctively, he moves his hand to his jean pocket, reaching for his phone out of habit and frowning when his fingers appear again empty. He tries the other pocket; still nothing. He tries his jacket pockets, knowing that he would feel the weight of it in there, but nonetheless being disappointed when there’s no phone magically emerging from the dark material with his hand. His frown deepens. Where the fuck is his phone? It’s not like him to lose it, at all. His lawyer — and manager, but he ignores whatever that bastard says out of spite — has always told him how important it is that he keeps his personal phone in his sight, and never in the easy access of those he doesn’t trust at all times. And normally he does, too, but in all the chaos that has ensued it seems to have gotten caught up in it, somewhere. Plus, he trusts literally everyone here. Nobody is a thief – well, Sirius has a feeling that Barty could be, but he decides not to think too deeply into that idea until he has searched this whole goddamn building, top to bottom. If it was his work phone, he wouldn’t care so much, but the fact that it’s his, the one he messages all his friends on, the one he takes selfies with James on, the one that has all of his secret, private social media accounts on for his close friends’ eyes only. If it got into the wrong hands, Sirius would consider himself fucked, let’s just say that.
He rises from his chair, thankful to have to no longer put his decades-old ballet skills into use in the form of dancing around broken shards of glass, and strides down the hall, the panic gradually setting into his head fueling his speed. He checks the break room first, where they all slept last night, as it feels like the obvious place. He does it thoroughly. He lifts up sleeping bags – all fifteen of them – he rummages through Lily’s sleepover supplies bag. He even checks inside the fucking fridge, on the off chance that it might somehow be in there . And still nothing. He’s starting to grow increasingly on edge with every place he checks that it’s not there. Pacing down the hallway, he thinks frantically about when he last saw it, mind racing. He was watching football with James – it was dark out, but it’s still spring so maybe ten p.m? He was starting to feel tired, the day’s events catching up to him, he remembers that. But then… nothing. His memory has gone utterly and totally blank. He groans in frustration and starts flinging open random doors lining the hallway, peering inside just to see, just to check that his phone hasn’t somehow made its way into one of the rooms he’s never even been inside of before. Just as he’s about to give up, nearing the end of the corridor, he sullenly opens a wooden door that looks identical to rest, and he nearly closes it again, not really bothering to look properly, until something catches his eye. Chairs strewn randomly about the room, obviously brightly coloured even in the dark. Sirius flips the light switch on and immediately recognises it as the little space where he cornered James the night before after seeing his moods change so drastically in such a short space of time – which he still privately thinks is slightly odd. Twisting his head about in the search for his phone, after all he did at least actually go into this room, is when he spots it.
Lying innocently on the large, oak dining table shoved up against the wall; a small black rectangle. Sirius strides over to it, wondering how the fuck it ended up here, with a charger cord sticking out of it. Maybe it was Remus, a small voice inside him whispers, making his stomach flip, but in the best way.
Though it’s only when he reaches the phone and picks it up, relief coursing through his veins, that he realises that it’s not his phone that he’s holding at all. That the familiar red Spiderman phone case is James’, and the lockscreen a picture of Euphemia, James’ Mother, is not the matching one of James’ Father, Fleamont, that he has set as his own. He’s about to toss it back onto the table and ultimately admit defeat to the universe when, and he doesn’t mean to, honestly, he accidentally reads one of the notifications branded across the screen. He blinks. Then blinks again. And again, thinking that if he does it enough times, his eyes will stop deceiving him and show him what the message actually says because surely this can’t be it. Surely not. He even scrubs at his eyes, almost smiling to himself at how absurd his body is being because James wouldn’t do this. Sirius would’ve known about it if he did. He would have told him. But the more and more he runs the message through his head, the more pronounced the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach becomes. Because part of him knows that it’s true. That it’s right there, so plainly written out for him on James’ phone. Part of him knows that it makes sense, that so many things make sense now, things that had left Sirius spiralling aimlessly after they had happened, wondering what their meaning was, whether he was being lied to or not. He thought to himself at the time, no, that’s impossible, besides there’s no proof. And then he’d forget about it. But here, as he finds himself face to face with that evidence he never had, that he never thought he would have, he remembers it all. Every conversation avoided, every plan cancelled, every time James was busy for mysterious, poorly explained reasons. Each and every lie he was fed, and swallowed whole without question, without the bat of an eye, all based on the firm belief that James wouldn’t do that to him. He’s your best friend, for God’s sake, he tells you everything just as you do him. Well. Clearly not everything. He reads the message one more time, really forcing himself to process it before he allows the emotions building up in his chest to show on his face.
(Yesterday, 20:39) reg ❤️: i miss you too, but i’ll see you soon, and i can’t wait. i love you, james.
Sirius' smile fades.