I'll Get It Eventually
When it comes out, Remus is irritated.
It’s on purpose, of course – Sirius has been breathing down his neck non-stop for the past hour and a half, telling him about the girl from last night. What he said, how she reacted, the dance of seduction they played until late in the evening . How nervous she was, because that’s what he likes most, that feeling of control he can’t get enough of.
And so of course, when Remus ignores him, pretends not to hear, buries himself in the book he’s studying, he has to act like he usually does – lest he lose the modicum of power he can feel pulsing in his veins. He prods, teases, asks him if he’s nervous, expecting Remus to bite back like he always does.
But instead, the boy turns to look at him, grabs the sides of his face, pulls him close enough they breathe the same air, and with the most genuine look Sirius has ever seen on his face, he utters the words.
“I’m not nervous around you.”
He doesn’t know what to do with himself for a moment. Remus doesn’t seem angry anymore. Frustrated, maybe. Tired, even. He’s searching his expression for something, something Sirius can’t put his finger on. And Sirius keeps thinking, because clearly this moment is important and Remus is his friend, so he has to try and find what it is and help, somehow.
He grasps at straws, desperately aware that he is too slow, too late. Remus is already glancing away. He’s retreating back into the normal back-and-forth that comes with their companionship, and Sirius can’t think of anything he wants less, but he doesn’t have the answers. On instinct, he still pushes, asks, says something, because that’s better than the invisible silence constantly between them lately.
Remus just shakes his head, softness in the brown of his eyes. Traces one of his scars, the one across his nose – the first one Sirius witnessed. And with the confidence of a dying man, he tells him.
“You’ll get it eventually. I can wait.”
And the moment is over. He turns around again, stuffs his head with knowledge. Back to gently ignoring Sirius and his boasting, back to reading in the quiet, back to the comfort of the Gryffindor common rooms in early afternoon.
Back to normal.
But Sirius thinks he can hear a mumble, not meant for him, in the midst of the reading to himself.
‘I can wait for you.’
**
Later, much later, Sirius barges in the same room with a renewed sense of urgency.
Remus is reading in his usual corner. His desk is covered in chocolates and Sirius, again, wonders how he hasn’t realized sooner. Because Remus isn’t nervous – he barely looks up at the commotion. All heads turn in anticipation, but Remus knows exactly what is coming.
He always does.
“I get it !” he cries out, because if he doesn’t, it feels like he’ll say something much, much less suited for non-Remus listeners. “I get it, Remus.” He strides, faster and faster, almost running as he slaloms through the chairs and tables and people to get to him.
It’s like he sees it for the first time – the glint in his eye, the way he leans a little closer before he speaks, the way his gaze doesn’t hold his because he knows Sirius is listening.
But it’s not the first time.
Or the second, either – because really, Remus was never nervous around Sirius.
“Can this wait ? I’m just finishing up here.” And Sirius wants to scream, because how darehe make them suffer the silence any longer – until it hits him.
Remus isn’t nervous.
Sirius is.
Because this is still new to him, and he hasn’t really taken the time to think about it, because he’s still bouncing with years’ worth of pent-up silence and he just wants to say it, now, now ! But Remus – Remus has waited.
Remus has lived in the silence, waiting for an answer that could very well have never come, waiting for Sirius, and of course it can wait until Remus is done studying. Of course Sirius can slow down. He’ll give the man ten more years, if he only asks, because Sirius knows he’ll be there at the end of it all. Still there.
Still waiting.
‘I can wait for you.’
Remus was always the sharpest of them all. But sometimes Sirius catches the wavering trust, so he knows he has to say it, because Remus isn’t a mind-reader, no matter how much it feels like it at times. The words feel foreign as they leave his lips, but somehow also right.
True.
“Yeah. Yeah, it can wait. No rush.”
This time, it’s Sirius’s fingers stroking the old scar on his nose – though Remus doesn’t stop him. It’s Sirius mumbling to himself about lost time and blind idiots while Remus laughs at him from behind his reading glasses. This time, when Sirius feels the inherent calm that comes with Remus Lupin, he doesn’t take it for granted.
He breathes it in, basks in it, revels in it. Sighs a little, content. Then, because he can, because Remus has finally closed his book and looked him in the eyes, he cups the man’s cheek, and he tells him.
“I’m not nervous, either.”