Ain't It Funny, What You'll Do?
In the six weeks he had been living in his new house, Remus still hadn’t been brave enough to enter Gran’s room. The door remained closed, and at night he suffered through dreams of opening the door and finding her there, stretched out on the bed, slowly turning blue. She looked nothing like herself, in the dreams. Even when he’d found her, early on a Wednesday morning, she had still been warm. Still pink. Still Gran.
In his nightmares, she is a husk. A corpse. A carcass, lying half rotted in her childhood bed.
Remus does not touch that door.
He doesn’t know what's worse- dreams of Fenrir, or dreams of Gran. he doesn’t dream of Fenrir for the moment, his sleeping thoughts haunted instead by gruesome images of his favourite person to have ever lived, with mottled and blue skin, sunken, unseeing eyes, and flies buzzing around her.
He does get a job, though. It’s been three weeks of pulling pints 6 nights a week at a cosy pub nestled in the corner of two quiet residential streets. For its size and nondescript location, it is surprisingly busy, and Remus is always on his feet, never getting a chance to rest from when his shift starts until close. His jumpers have started to smell slightly like cider, for how much gets spilt on him. He likes it, though. He hadn’t expected Bristolians to be so friendly, but they love his accent and a chat at the bar. It’s mainly older men and women- proper adults, but every now and then uni students will come in, small groups of girls and boys in posh clothes and posh accents and posh attitudes, drinking the cheapest cider on tap and playing the ancient board games stacked in the corner by the door.
The pay is good- better than Remus had expected. And with no rent to pay, he suddenly has cash to spare. He doesn’t spend much of it though- squirrelling it all away in his savings account for rainy months ahead. After his first paycheck lands, he does treat himself to a brand new pair of church quads, unable to stop himself going misty eyed in the shop as he thought about how much Gran would have loved them.
Three weeks is also enough for tentative new friendships to form. Behind the bar are Mary and Peter, other bar staff close to his age, both of them doing their masters at the uni of Bristol. They’re both lovely- Mary is loud and funny and crass, and Peter is soft and small with kind eyes and a sunny disposition. There’s Dorcas, too. Her aunt owns the pub, and she’s been working behind the bar since she was sixteen. The four of them huddle around the bar, nursing stolen half-pints and Remus almost feels normal for the first time in the three months that had passed since- well. Since everything changed. Since Gran left. Having Dorcas and Mary is also incredible- they are Remus’ first interactions with people of colour in Bristol, both black like him, and he feels comfortable with them in a way he can’t ever remember feeling in Scotland.
The month and a half before he moved he didn’t even remember. Everything had been left to him, and he spent his days on autopilot. He would wake up cursing the sun for shining, hating the birds for singing. He would stumble through the flat he and Gran had shared, unseeing, unthinking, unfeeling, and he had talked to the lawyers and handed in the latest draft of his thesis and he had contacted the estate agents and the funeral home and his Gran’s friends, and every night he would come home and cry until he couldn’t breathe, curled up in a ball under the quilt she had made for him, wishing he could rip himself apart. There were crescent-moon scars on his shoulders from how hard he had dug in with his nails, arms wrapped around himself, unsure if he was trying to tear himself to pieces or hold himself together.
Then he had received the keys and the deed for the house, and boxed up the flat, letting it be the shitty landlords problem, and he had rented the cheapest van he could find, and he had driven himself the eight and a half hours from Aberdeen to Bristol, refusing to think about what was ahead, or what he had left behind, only focussing on the road directly in front of him.
*
Remus turned from his conversation to whoever had just come up to the bar.
“Alright? What can I- oh, hello.”
“Alright, neighbour?” It was Sirius, leaning against the bar, playing with his lip piercing with his tongue, making the silver hoop glint and catch in the low overhead lighting. It was quite charming.
“Yeah, I'm alright. What can I get you?”
“What cider do you recommend?”
Remus smiled and scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not really a cider man myself, but my favourite is the orchard thieves. It’s really sweet. Don’t tell the locals though- they dinnae think it counts as proper cider.”
“I’ll trust your judgement.” Sirius’ accent was very posh and Remus didn’t expect to find it attractive. It was, though. Very attractive.
“One orchard thieves, coming up.”
“What do I owe you?” Sirius slipped his hand into the pocket of his- surprisingly smart- pinstriped trousers and Remus waved his free hand as he pulled the pint.
“On the house. Repayment for the biscuits.”
“Remus.” Sirius was grinning. “Those were weeks ago, and they were all from Harry anyway, so really you owe him a pint.”
“What, the seven year old?” Remus scoffed, pushing the full glass across the oak bar top.
“He’s five, actually, but he’ll love that you thought he was older.” Sirius took a long sip and nodded. “It is sweet. Like posh apple juice. I approve.”
“I live to serve.” Remus responded, opening the tiny glass wash under the bar and stacking the burning cups up on the bar. This felt dangerously like flirting, but Sirius was a father, and Remus was a mess, and harmless flirting was fine but he couldn’t get into it with his neighbour for the foreseeable future when he was in the worst emotional state of his life.
This though; the job, the flirting, the casual friends for the first time since his undergrad. It felt nice. Normal. Almost naughty, like he didn’t deserve nice and normal things. He wasn’t sure he was. A large part of him didn’t want anything to be nice. How could niceness exist in a world without Gran? Ease, lightheartedness, humour- they had no place in his life now. Like if he felt happy, he was disrespecting her somehow. Not grieving deeply enough. Not mourning properly. Not missing her so much that it consumed his every cell.
Remus left Sirius to his pint and went to check on the stock in the back. He sat in the broom cupboard for a very long time. Long enough to let the darkness trickle back into him, smothering the small rays of light that had begun to stream in through the cracks in his pain. It didn’t feel right. How dare he smile when Gran would never smile again?
Sirius was gone by the time Remus returned to the bar, a tenner tucked under his empty glass.
Remus didn’t notice anything else that happened on his shift.
*
Sirius came in again the next Wednesday. He was wearing loose, wide-leg grey trousers that looked a lot like they may have come from the women's section, and a slim-fit white button down with a fabric quality that betrayed its likely very high price.
“Alright?” Remus approached cautiously. He hadn’t seen the other man or his son since last week, and he was just now starting to see how his leaving so abruptly may have come across as rude.
“Yeah. tired. You?” Sirius looked it. He had purple bags under his eyes and his hair was scraped back into a bun. The roots looked somewhat greasy, like he hadn’t washed it in a while. His pale skin had taken on a yellow tinge.
“Been better, been worse. Same again?”
“Stronger, if you have it?” Sirius perched on one of the bar stools and was drumming his nails on the bar. Remus saw they were painted black, and had a sudden vision of Harry’s mum giving Sirius a loving manicure. It bothered him. He wasn’t sure why.
“Mm. eight percent cider sound okay?”
“Perfect.” Sirius’ posh accent meant his T’s sounded crisp. Remus grabbed a clean pint glass and made his way to the correct tap, staring at Sirius’ silhouette in his periphery. The man looked drained, slumped over at the counter, now digging his nails into the soft wood of the bar top. Remus slid the full glass over and watched as Sirius drained half of it at once.
“Rough day?”
“Mm. of a sort. Harry got into trouble at school. I had to go in for a chat.” Sirius made quotations around the word chat and rolled his eyes. Remus caught his drift. “It's just that none of the teachers take me seriously because of my age. We- well, Harry has had a bit of a rough go of it, and this is a relatively new school. We chose not to divulge his history, in the hopes of a fresh start, but it means they have no context when he acts out. They see me and just assume he’s not being raised right. Once, one of his teachers told me that just because the boy was well-loved didn’t mean he was being raised correctly. It honest to god made me cry. I’m doing my best, you know? And it's hard. Harry, he’s… he’s not easy. He’s perfect, and I love him more than life itself, but he’s not easy. And his teacher’s don’t make it easy when they make baseless assumptions about his background.”
Sirius huffed and drained the rest of his pint.
“Another?”
“I shouldn’t. I won’t. Thanks, though. A glass of water, though, if you could.” Remus complied, dropping two cubes of ice and a slice of lemon into a glass and filling it up with the tap.
“That sounds difficult. I’m no’ the best person for this because I dinnae ken any weans, but I know how it feels when teacher’s judge you based on your background.” Sirius’ looked hopeful at this.
“School wasnae easy for me, but I got through it. Harry will be fine. Again, I dinnae ken much, but I think you’re doing a stellar job, for what it's worth.” Remus busied himself loading the glasswash as he spoke, feeling vulnerable, but Sirius looked like he needed the encouragement.
“It means something. Thank you, Remus. I best get home and cheer up before Harry gets home. What do I owe?”
“You owe me nisht, Sirius. That tenner last week was both unnecessary and covers the price of two pints.” Remus raised his eyebrows, daring Sirius to argue, but the other man just heaved a sigh and slid off the barstool, picking up his satchel and waving half-heartedly before leaving. Remus watched his every step.