chapter 7
Remus doesn’t look as happy as he used to, Lily thinks. She hasn’t seen him in a long time, and although they love each other deeply, they fall in and out of each other's lives on a regular basis. When she last saw him, there was a glow to him that she had never seen before, and she was both jealous that he hadn’t found it in her and overjoyed that he had found it, finally. She remembers asking, so how long have you two been dating?, and being met with a flush underneath the scar that lay delicately across his face, starting in the corner of his right eye and ending just above the left corner of his lip. Laughter, echoing from both of their mouths. The other boy, Sirius, seemingly paler than before and scratching the nape of his neck like he was trying to draw blood. The two had gravitated towards each other without conversation, like two parallel poles of magnets. Now she watches Remus pointedly move away from him, as if being too close could burn him.
“Remus, what on earth happened?”
—-
Sirius, to put it lightly, is a prick. Remus thought. Obviously, he couldn’t quite say that to Lily's face, because she would want to know why. Telling Lily why his life was a mess was not something he wanted to do in front of the person who made his life a mess. He was truly trying to focus on her conversation, having moved on to listening to ramble about how James wasn’t quite the roommate that she was expecting, but in his own head was the constant churning motion, the way that sirius’s voice broke when he sang the chorus, ‘i don’t want your body but i hate to think about you with somebody else.’ He never wanted me , Remus was quite sure about that. Sometimes, though, his hatred bordered on jealousy, and all this time Remus had never let himself dwell on it, choosing instead to relish in the embarrassment of watching Sirius sneer at the copy of a picture of dorian grey that Remus had annotated for him. Whenever he missed his best friend he let himself remember what it felt like to lose everything again, and God did it hurt.
Sirius keeps attempting to touch him lightly, whether that be on his shoulder or his elbow or under the bar with the side of his knees, letting their proximity decrease as the last half hour of their shift drags on. Remus finds himself squeezing his eyes shut and counting to three on multiple occasions, as he feels the smell of his sickeningly sweet, rose scented curl cream that he gets his cousin to send him from france. Every time the smell hits him, whether it's from Sirius himself or someone he’s walking past on the street or even the stupid flower shop by the bus stop on his road, he can feel his throat closing up. The tears will brush the inner corners of his eyelids and he’s so overwhelmed with the need to curl up into Sirius like it's the only thing left to live for.
Anyway, he hates the smell and he needs to take a break from it whenever he possibly can.
As the clock hits 11, he wipes down the counter before waving at the few regulars left in the bar. The only people still there are Marlene and obviously Sirius, who is in the back grabbing his things.
“Has he spoken to you yet?”
“Was I supposed to say something about the song, Marls?”
She’s climbed over the counter now, and she's looking at him quite seriously, and he feels uncomfortable under her gaze. Marlene’s always been a little bit intense, a little bit erratic (and very much the best person once you got to know her.)
“Can you put a leash on your boyfriend, please? He just doesn’t give me any personal space.”
“We broke up. I’m a lesbian. You listened to my coming out? You said you’d deck all the homophobes??!! Remus?! Are you telling me you won’t deck my oncoming army of haters? Who else to punch them but you, what with your gorgeous hands and your ravishing muscles, remus darling, please-”
“Marl-'' he's trying to wheeze out an interruption, but she made him start laughing.
The thing about Remus is that it's so hard to get him laughing that when he starts, he doesn’t stop. At this moment, conveniently, Sirius walks back in. He seems a bit surprised, uncomfortable, even, so Remus can tell he’s heard Marlene's spiel about Remus's Manly hands. If it's at all possible, he starts laughing even harder, because his life is such a fucking joke at this point that why wouldn’t he. after a second of silence, an attempt to regain composure, Marlene continues in the same tone.
“Remus, he needs to move back in,” Marlene gets out while trying to catch her breath.
“What-”
“Yeah babe, sorry, but if i’m not pretending i’m in love with him it means I don’t have to deal with his sulky mood at not living with you in your little shared flat anymore. So please, take him away.”
Silence. A blank look from Remus, who never considered the possibility. He probably had nowhere else to go. Remus was obviously not his first choice.
“Also, he’ll be homeless otherwise, I think that's another very good reason.”
Remus turns to see if Sirius has anything to say at all about this ambush on him, but instead the other boy is staring quite stony-faced at Marlene, mouthing something that Remus cannot be bothered to decipher. Marlene has her expression on where she pretends she doesn’t understand whats going on (she does, really, but the dumb blonde stereotype can be beneficial in some situations like this), and oh, would you look at that, she’s putting her coat on, she’s backing away slowly- Fuck, marlene is in fact abandoning him in this situation, he thinks. I didn’t really expect anything else, to be honest.
***
Sirius black, to put it frankly, is a bit mortified. More than a bit mortified. He wanted to ask Remus himself, he really did, but he also didn’t want the other boy to think that he was naive enough to expect forgiveness anymore. And here marlene goes, off her fucking rocker as per usual, inserting herself into my life, again he thinks. He’s tried mouthing marlene, shut the fuck up with his angriest expression on, to no avail. He’s starting to think that at this point he should probably just give up and move to Paris, call everyone on the phone every 3 months to remind them that his life is definitely better than theirs, with or without his remus.
A silence has descended over the two of them, awkward and all encompassing. He starts to grab his dishcloth and putting the glasses away, before moving onto his next and least favourite job, taking stock of the spirits that they keep high above the back of the bar. He absolutely despises having to be the one to check the levels of their most expensive products, especially when he knows that no one would’ve bought anything from them anyway, but he also knows that Remus likes getting all of the jobs properly done at closing, and he doesn’t want to piss off the person he deeply affected and hurt who he now needs the biggest favour ever from. He drags a barstool over and stands on it to reach the top of the shelf, cursing his parents for the fact they only blessed him with a pretty face and a sharp mind yet absolutely no tall gene because he’s yet to reach six foot and goddamn it, how is a self-respecting British lad going to pull if he’s shorter than 6’2.
He’s mindlessly taking stock, writing down the numbers on a little post-it note and leaning over every few seconds, when suddenly he leans too far and he can feel the stool start to slip. His heartbeat quickens, for whatever reason, and he knows that if he falls then they’ll probably take him to hospital. there’s nothing that sirius is more fucking petrified of than a hospital. The fall happens quickly, but so does the magical hands of Remus Lupin moving to grab his torso, hands just over his upper rib cage, just before the stool slips completely with a dull thud.He lifts him like Sirius weighs nothing, sitting him down on the counter of the bar. His face is slightly ashen when Sirius looks up at him, and he wants to laugh, wants to make fun of it, aww, you were worried about me, but he knows that’s not his place anymore.
“Thanks, Remus.”
“Wouldn’t want you ending up in a&e.” he says gruffly, as if he finds it difficult to admit that he does in fact care what happens to Sirius in the first place.
They stay seated there, Remus’s hands by Sirius's, his legs against Remus's stomach and Remus's eyes averted far away from his, despite it all. Sirius attempts to slip down but finds he’s stuck, and if he moved forward the two would be too close for platonic, too close for comfort. Instead, he tries to move his legs forward, but Remus pushes them back. He leans in, closer, and almost places their foreheads together before coming back and composing himself.
It's like Sirius has been transported through time. He can feel his breathing hitch, suddenly eleven years old and watching his new friend have a panic attack for the first time, doing what he thought he would only ever share with his brother, leaning in closer to him than he ever had to anyone outside his family, put your bad thoughts in my head, too. It’ll hurt less if we share them.
Remus finally looks at him, and when his honey eyes finally trace over his nose bridge, his forehead, his lips again, Sirius can see that the lighting makes them look darkened, almost black.
“Why didn’t you ask me yourself, sirius? You know I would never say no to you.”
He starts off in his old warm voice, but hardens towards the end like never saying no to his best friend is something he’s disgusted by, embarrassed about. Sirius questions this, wondering why Remus would ever want to say no to him. Has he ever put him into a situation where Remus feels like he’s being used? Before he explores it any further he feels the sudden absence of honey-gold eyes meeting him, the warmth of someone else's body gone from his legs.
“I don’t want an answer, actually. Just come back whenever you want.”
He’s turned away, washing his hands in the sink, before unrolling his black sleeves and walking out the back entrance, his left leg slightly slower than his right.
His hip is probably hurting him again, I should get him more of that heat spray he likes is the first thing Sirius thinks.
The second is a very succinct, prompt, and understandable, the fuck just happened?