Chapter 4
A couple days passed- Sirius was restless to go back to the library, and James was laughing at him.
Peter came to visit Remus a few times.
Remus felt a bit better after those visits. Something about having people near, it’s just easier to feel real.
Of course, they didn’t go back to the library that weekend.
But, after school on Monday- even though Peter wasn’t there (he’d had a doctors appointment, or something or other)- Remus made his was to his table.
Suffice to say, he was a tad surprised to find Sirius there. Without James, nonetheless.
Remus had always assumed they were something of a set- a ‘do not separate’ kind of pair. Best friends, and all that.
“Uh… Hi?” Remus set his bag down, hovering around the table instead of sitting down. “Were you- uh… waiting for me?”
Sirius looked to the side, back to Remus, away again, then back again. “Uh… yeeeesss?”
Remus didn’t know exactly how to feel about that- considering he didn’t even know if he and Sirius are friends- but he sat down and opened a book on the table.
“…. Thanks, I guess.”
Sirius leaned forward, peering at the book. “Whatcha reading?”
“A book.”
“What kind of book?”
“A good one.”
Sirius sighed. Clearly, Remus wasn’t going to talk about his book. Maybe a different approach would work…?
“How’d you get that nickname? Moony, I mean.”
That seemed to elicit some sort of response.
Remus’s cheeks colored, just a bit, and he eyed Sirius over the top of his book.
“Where’d you hear that?”
Sirius laughed, batting his eyes innocently. “Oh, call it an astute observation. But still! Tell me.”
Remus grumbled. It wasn’t an embarrassing story, not really. But Sirius seemed to be having soooo much fun with it- which was annoying, obviously.
“Peter gave it to me.”
Sirius groaned, melting out across the table with a dramatic flourish. “Noooo, why did he give it to you?”
Remus was caught off guard at Sirius’s dramatics, trying his best to hide a smile (which only half-worked).
“Okay, okay, don’t be so dramatic-“
Remus snapped his book shut, eyeing Sirius. “If I tell you, you have to let me ask you a question.”
Sirius nodded, sitting upright. “Of course!”
Remus nodded- good, good.
“Fine- … the first time Peter ever came over to my house, and into my room- I had… a lot of- well- okay, I just… really like the moon.”
Sirius held his hand out, putting out a thumbs down at Remus. “Booo! Boring! More details!”
Remus rolled his eyes, and once again hid behind his book. “…… There were a lot of drawings, posters, and charts, tracking the moon, and the moon phases, and- you get it.”
Sirius blinked.
The moon, huh?
The cold and bright, stunning and breathtaking, mysterious and captivating moon?
Some beam of light in the dark- a tool that ancient travelers used to navigate, the beautiful and ever-powerful entity who manipulates the tides and controls our nights?
…… It made perfect sense, in Sirius’s mind.
Remus, if possible, shrubk behind his book even further.
Sirius had done nothing but stare at him for a solid fifteen seconds, and it was almost… worrying?
No- no, Remus wasn’t worried about what Sirius was thinking.
He was… weirded out. It was weird.
“Uh… well you don’t have to go silent about it…”
Sirius took a moment, processing that Remus had spoken, before he let out an ‘oh!’ sound.
“Right! Right, right, right, sorry- no, that’s cool! The moon is beautiful- you know, in ancient greek, they thought the moon was a second chance for everyone on the planet- that it gave us new potential-“
Remus interrupted Sirius with a small laugh.
Not like his other laughs.
Not like a ‘laughing AT you’ laugh.
Or a ‘wow, that was dumb’ laugh.
But a… ‘you’re kind of a lot, but I think it’s laugh.
NOT that Remus thought Sirius was cute.
“Sorry, sorry- I’m not… laughing at you-“
Remus’s words faded into oblivion as Sirius stared at him, his laugh looped on repeat in his mind.
And that was the moment- the moment where, had they been in a TV show or movie, everything would go soft and warm. Where everything was yellow-ish, and the lights seemed to glow, framing every curve of Remus Lupin’s face.
The moment where Sirius had to stop, consider, and come to the conclusion that ‘oh, fuck, I might have a crush’.
“…… I just- liked your enthusiasm.”
Sirius zoned back into the later half of Remus’s sentence, deciding it best to just nod along.
“Oh, yes- no- I mean, it’s okay.”
Jesus Christ, nice one.
Sirius Orion Black, forced to attend classes on speaking clearly and concisely to no end, STILL got tongue tied if a cute boy was nice to him.
Remus eyed Sirius, unsure if he was genuine or not.
……
Oh well. Remus didn’t care.
But maybe a change of subject would help.
“Well- do your friends have any nicknames for you?”
Sirius nodded, ticking them off on his fingers as he listed them.
“Oh, yeah, loads- there’s Siri, star, Snuffles, Padfoot-“
Before Sirius could go on, Remus leaned forward a bit. “Hold on- Snuffles?”
“That’s… not important-“
“No, no no no-“ Remus looked as if he was hiding some sort of grin- which, he was.
“That’s my question- explain that one.”
This story, of course, could not be explained in a timely manner- and, if you knew Sirius Black, you would understand why several hours passed before he was finished with his story.
Of course, soon after that, the bell rang, and he was forced to take his leave.
Remus packed up soon after- though, it was odd… he’d never exactly left due to a lack of company before.