Chapter 7
When Remus arrived at the Potter’s house on the last day of July, James was nowhere to be found.
He said his hellos to Euphemia, who was sitting in the kitchen and knitting what must have been one of the longest scarves in the world, but she seemed far too occupied to answer any questions, so he wandered out into the hall. He took his time watching the wall of moving portraits, when soft footsteps echoed from up the passageway, and he turned to find himself face to face with Sirius.
Remus stared at him. “Hey.”
"Hey." Sirius was chewing down on his lip. His hair had been scraped back from his face, pulling his curls up at the nape of his neck. For a few seconds, they stood there not saying anything more, before Sirius asked– "Want to walk into town?"
"Where's James?" Remus replied as he glanced towards the back door.
"He's practising." Sirius mumbled, tugging at the neckline of his tight shirt, where it stuck to his bronzed skin. He must have painted his nails in the past week, the black varnish was bitten and fading. "Wants to make Captain this year. Bloody maniac."
"Right." Remus said, squinting at him. "What do you want from town?"
"A piercing."
"What kind of piercing?"
"Eyebrow."
Remus smiled. "I'll put on my shoes."
Before there was nothing but long, sloping country lanes, the pair had to scramble through a few overgrown fields, scratched by thorns and barely dodging herds of menacing cows. Their silence should have not been so stilted, so heavy, and Remus couldn't tell if it was the cloudy promise of rain overhead, or the bloody, bedraggled remains of their friendship that lay in the space between them.
There's no way you're getting rid of me, Moony, Sirius had said once. It had been in second year, just after the boys had told him they knew why he disappeared every month on a full moon, and Remus had locked himself in the bathroom in a blind panic for the next four hours. Sirius had spoken to him through the keyhole and told him not to be such a fucking idiot and come to dinner before I break down this door.
The last gate that led out onto the road was covered in green moss and vines. Sirius' boot caught on the damp wooden step of the stile, and he would have gone slipping into the mud if Remus hadn't seized at his shirt at where it clung to his waist. His warm, solid weight crashed into him, smelling like cigarette smoke, and the orange marmalade he'd had for breakfast, and Remus stumbled backwards before his worn trainers found a foothold in the wet grass. There was a split second where their faces were inches from each other, and Sirius' gaze darted down, down towards his mouth.
“Sorry.” Sirius mumbled and pulled himself away, dipping his head to stare hard at his brown-flecked jeans.
“Sirius.” Remus said. “Stop being a twat.”
Sirius' shoulders tightened as if yanked straight by a string. “I'm not.”
"Well, can you stop acting like I'm going to punch you?"
Raking back the dark curls gathering at his temple, Sirius barked out a sharp, lovely laugh. "I could take you."
"We both know you couldn't." Remus replied and knocked their shoulders together as they continued down the path. Finally, Sirius glanced up at him through his long, dark eyelashes, and smiled, but he was still quiet.
It was a Friday afternoon, and the small town was busy with throngs of mothers with perms and pushchairs, and old women clutching their handbags, most of whom frowned at Sirius' wild hair and leather jacket; he glared right back and tugged Remus along a shadowed side street, towards a small shop crammed in between a salon and a bakery.
Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and dense hairspray, and the most recent, over-played Elton John song was blasting from a small radio, but instead of his usual scowl at anyone daring to play Elton John in his presence, Sirius bounced on the balls of his feet and stared around at the bright posters pinned up on the walls. Remus was sure he would never grasp that Muggle photos did not move.
Behind the counter, a girl leaned back against a stool, flipping through a magazine glossed with images of mascara-smeared celebrities and tan women in colourful bikinis. A single eyebrow, glinting silver, raised at the soft ringing of the bell, and she glanced up from over the fold of her issue to rake curious, coy eyes over Sirius as he strode forwards-- a familiar look.
"Alright?" She said and pushed her bangles further up one arm, jangling with the twist of her wrist.
"I'm here for an eyebrow piercing!" Sirius announced with a dazzling grin and slapped something down on the surface between them. Remus peered over his shoulder to see a single five-pound note. The girl blinked at it, slowly, but didn't reach to pick it up, although Sirius didn't seem to notice this.
"Can it be titanium?" Sirius asked, leaning over the case to frown through the glass at the glimmering circles of metal.
The girl sniffed, her snub nose a sore pink, and wound a lock of bleached blonde hair around a finger. "Sure."
She jerked her head, a quick, strange motion that Remus nearly missed and then walked through a curtain of hanging beads. While Sirius stalked ahead, Remus rifled in his jacket pocket to retrieve a crumpled ten-pound note, and placed it down on top of the counter. He followed Sirius into a room where a reclined chair sat to one side, worn at the edges, and an old cabinet had been pushed up against one yellow-washed wall.
"Sit. I need gloves." The girl mumbled and shuffled back out of the door.
Sitting, Sirius leaned his head back against the rough leather of the chair, his gaze fixed up on the dirty white of the ceiling, spotted with water-marks and faded where it dipped to meet the crown. He wrinkled his nose, and for a moment, looked so like his brother, it was ghostly.
“Nice place this.” He murmured, crossing one ankle over the other and turning his face to smile at Remus, a small, quirking thing at the corner of his mouth, like he wasn’t sure if he should be smiling at all.
“Are you nervous?” Remus asked.
Sirius rubbed at his jaw with his knuckle. “Not about the piercing.”
Remus levelled him a silent, appraising stare, and then away again, out of the fogged window. "I told Peter that I'm gay." He said.
He heard Sirius shift, the leather squeaking, his throat clearing, but Remus wasn't sure he wanted to know his expression, not just yet, so he concentrated on the distant, moving shape of a car down the street.
"Was he okay about it?" Sirius asked.
"Barely batted an eyelid." Remus smiled, more to himself. "Better reaction than you."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Twisting back around, Remus raised an eyebrow at how Sirius had sat bolt upright, his brow furrowed, the hard flints of his restless eyes. Remus leaned back against the wall, arms folding across his chest, where his heart fluttered. "I had to chase you through the grounds to talk to you about it."
"Merlin, Remus. I didn't care that you were kissing a boy." Sirius snapped, pink now rising to his cheeks. "I just wished you'd told me."
"That I kissed boys?"
"I don't know." Sirius breathed out, and he deflated a little, slumping backwards into the chair once more. "You keep so many secrets."
Remus lifted a shoulder. "There's just some things I can't tell you."
"You can tell me anything."
"No." Remus said. "I can't."
The door opened, hinges screeching, and the girl walked back in, snapping blue rubber gloves up her wrists as she fixed the two of them with a blithe, absent smile.
“Ready?” She asked, sitting down on an old wooden stool to pick up a pair of long tongs from a metal tray that made Remus shiver. He could taste the silver in the air.
Sirius nodded, but his hand was twitching by his side, so Remus reached over to place a palm over his knuckles, squeezing. His skin was cold and soft, and he jolted beneath Remus' grip, but when their eyes met, Sirius grinned, like he never had before, like it was something just between the two of them.
Remus wanted to kiss him. He wanted to pin him onto the chair and kiss him right there, pull up his shirt, unbutton his jeans, just to feel more of him, kiss and kiss and kiss him. But instead, he gritted his teeth and watched the girl prepare the needle.
*
They caught the train the next morning, once Peter had arrived, red-faced and towing a trunk behind him up the gravel drive. It had taken longer than they would have liked to leave the manor, as Euphemia insisted on re-packing Peter’s mess of jumbled clothes and copious bottles of suncream into a smaller bag, but afterwards the four boys set off down the country roads towards the train station.
After running to make their train, they collapsed into one of the table seats, Sirius cramming himself in next to Remus to prop his legs up. It was a couple hours to Lily’s house up in Cokeworth, so Remus found his page in his book and began to read while the three boys talked, discussing some prank they had planned for Christmas that was definitely going to go wrong; but for now he was happy to leave them in blissful ignorance. The sun was hot through the window, blazing against the side of his face. After a few minutes of easy silence fell over the group, Sirius’ head drooped to rest against Remus' shoulder, warm and soft with sleep, but the jolt of the train along the tracks was enough to wake him up after half an hour.
"I don't know how you can just nod off anywhere." said James while Sirius had stretched out his arms and legs, and Remus' chest tightened at the arch of his spine, the rise of his shirt and the sliver of tanned skin it uncovered. Sirius lounged back in his seat, loose-limbed and smiling.
"It's a dog thing."
"Everything with you is a dog thing." Peter whined, his brow furrowing. "How comes I don't have any rat things?"
"You have rat things, Pete." James patted him on the back, but paused for a few long seconds before adding-- "You've got a great sense of smell!"
"And lovely whiskers." Remus murmured with a wry twinge to his voice as he flipped another page of a book.
Sirius laughed, and Remus looked over at him, just to look. The strong, delicate line of his jaw, the almond of his grey eyes where his lashes swept, silver glinting from his right eyebrow, the beauty mark high on his left cheekbone, where age had hollowed him into sharp angles, the dimple right next to his full, pink mouth, his curving, chapped lips, the place where his black hair curled at his neck, the honeyed column of his throat.
Remus couldn't believe he was real. He couldn't believe he was allowed to sit here and watch him. Sometimes, in moments like these, Remus had a feeling, deep in his chest, that he had walked in on something he was never supposed to see. That he was skating on paper-thin ice, knowing that the drop would come, but it never did. It was a state of endless terror. Remus would never be sure if he loved Sirius Black, or feared him.
"Alright, Moony?" James asked and Remus' head snapped to the side to blink at him. "Only you look like you're about to eat Padfoot."
Flushing, Remus spared another half a glance at Sirius, who was now staring right back. "Piss off, Prongs."
"I'm just saying!" James said, throwing his hands up, a strange glint to his brown eyes. "If you're that hungry, it'd be a lot cleaner for you to eat a sandwich or something. Isn't there a trolley on this train?"
Remus stood from his seat, rather abruptly, "I'm going to the toilet." He announced and stalked down the length of the carriage until he was slamming the door of the tiny cubicle behind him.
The mirror was dirty and faded, shattered from the corner, shining with silver cracks, but he frowned at his distorted reflection all the same and willed himself to stop being so pathetic. He knew by now that pleading with himself for wanting things he could never have didn't work, but it was worth a try.
He sighed, and wrenched the tap onto cold to splash water up his hot wrists. There was a knock at the thin door as he reached for a paper towel.
"In a minute!" He called. The knocking grew louder and more insistent and he rolled his eyes and yanked open the door. "I said, in a-- oh. What?"
Sirius frowned at him. "Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Ignore James." mumbled Sirius, leaning a shoulder against the door. "He's just being--"
"It doesn't matter." Remus said, firmly, before he could finish his sentence. "I don't care about that. Just needed the loo."
"Right." Sirius narrowed his eyes. "Why have you got your Moony voice on then?"
"My what?"
"Your Moony voice. When you get all stiff and grumpy."
Remus tried not to smile. "Don't be ridiculous."
"You're the one hiding in a toilet." Sirius smirked and tugged at his sleeve, so Remus followed him back to their friends. They settled back into their seats, Sirius’ thigh pressed up against his own, and Remus tried to read again, but struggled to concentrate. It was a fucking pain, always being this aware of another person’s presence.
Another hour must have passed before the train slowed, which sent James into an immediate frenzy, leaping up from his seat.
"How do I look?" James asked, frantic hands smoothing down his shock of black hair as he peered out the window at the approaching platform. Snorting, Sirius rolled his eyes and his leg shot out, aiming a hard boot at his shin, which James expertly dodged. "Worthy of Lily's love and attention?"
"You look like a wanker." Sirius supplied, brightly. "No changes there."
"You look great, Prongs." Peter said without tearing his wistful gaze away from the pair of giggling girls on the other side of the carriage. He knocked Sirius' arm and nodded his head towards them, but when Sirius looked over, he only shrugged and rose to his feet to pull their bags from the top rack.
"Not sure you're quite worthy enough though." Remus raised an eyebrow at James, stuffing his book into his own satchel. "Maybe if you prostrate yourself at her feet, cling to her ankles, that kind of thing."
"I'm going to push you in front of the train." James said and he pointed an accusing finger at him, as if placing some sort of evil curse upon him. "Then you'll be sorry, won't you?"
"You'd be doing me a favour."
"You couldn't kill Remus, Prongs." Peter mumbled. He seemed to have given up on the girls, though he looked a little disgruntled. "Sirius would just jump right after him."
The carriage fell quiet as the three boys turned to look at Peter, who scratched at his nose and stared back at them. The train had nearly pulled to a stop and through the window, Remus caught sight of a familiar flash of red hair.
"Lily!" James cried, his voice shattering through the stilted silence and he went scrambling for the door, leaving Peter to lug his forgotten bag over his shoulder with a deep, exasperated frown. Smiling, Sirius nudged at Remus’ ribs and bounded after his friend to step out of the carriage.
Outside, the platform was near empty aside from the three girls who stood near the rows of painted benches. Marlene was waving an enthusiastic arm above her head as they approached, and Dorcas had her hand up to shield her brown eyes from the unforgiving sunshine.
"You've grown!" Dorcas groaned as she took in Remus, her hands now dropping to perch on her hips. "I thought I told you to stop doing that!"
Remus sighed. "It was a difficult request."
"Remus!" Lily flashed white teeth at him as she pulled him into a hug. Grinning, he squeezed her so tight her feet nearly departed from the ground, before setting her down and stepped back. Lily's green eyes flashed over Sirius and Peter standing there on the platform, before pausing on James, who was beaming so hard, it looked painful. She nodded, once. "Potter."
"Evans." He returned, looking as though he was stuck to the concrete floor. "How's-- holiday? Hot... weather. Good summer?"
"Lovely." She said with a smile that twitched traitorously at her mouth, and then turned to address the other boys instead, as Dorcas fought to suppress her laughter in Marlene's shoulder. "Dad is making you camp in our back garden. He doesn't want any boys in the house with us."
"He shouldn't be worried." Sirius said cheerfully. "James is clearly a bumbling bloody idiot, Peter is the human equivalent of a Blast Ended Skrewt, and Remus is--" Sirius swallowed. "Remus is Remus."
Under his breath, Remus muttered a quiet-- "Thanks."
Peter was a little more offended, letting James’ bag drop to the ground to snap, his cheeks blooming a bright red– “Hey!”
"Only joking, Pete." Sirius slung an arm around Peter’s squat shoulders, and he seemed to soften a little. The heat had started to trickle down Remus’ spine, and he was starting to wish they could step inside the station.
Marlene snorted, shaking short blonde hair back from his face. She must have just cut it short. "As if we'd want anything to do with any of you anyway."
"Ouch." Sirius winked. "I missed you too, McKinnon."
"You're disgusting." Marlene told him, and they grinned at each other, still disturbingly twin-like in their expressions, no matter how long Remus had known them both.
For most of their third year, James had been convinced that Marlene and Sirius fancied each other, until the day when he'd accused the pair of flirting in the Great Hall over dinner, and Sirius had spat out his pumpkin juice to scoff don't be disgusting, she's basically my sister! After that, Remus stopped wanting to drive a fork through Marlene's hand, and found that he was actually very fond of her company. Strange, really.
"Come on." Lily said, and she led them towards a gate. “You’ll want to dump your bags before the summer fait this evening.”
“Is no one going to wish me a happy birthday?” Marlene wondered aloud.