A Request from Severus Snape
Opening night came and went, and the play was a great success. Remus played a wonderful Romeo and managed to stay sober for every performance. He was also, at every performance, able to cry real tears for his Juliet, and Sirius when he wasn’t rushing actors back and forth or making demands into his headset, cried a little, too, thinking of how he and Remus were being kept apart just like the star-crossed lovers.
Minerva was well again. They were all happy to see her in the audience at the final performance, front row centre, the first to stand for an ovation. She brought red roses for Severus to thank him for taking her place in a pinch and when they all asked her to join them for ice cream she agreed.
“The children told me their dear ‘Mr. Lupin,’ as they call him, has found himself a boyfriend,” she said to Sirius, leaning close to him in line at the ice cream parlour. By “the children,” he knew she meant the teens in the play, all of whom were students of Remus on occasion. “However, even they can see that Severus is not treating him well. I’m surprised at you, Sirius. I thought you took Remus’ well-being to be your personal responsibility.”
She was only half-joking, and she was right, anyway.
“I wish it were as easy as just forbidding him to date the guy,” he said.
Luna, who was in front of them, turned around with a smile. “My father says the same thing about me.”
Sirius chuckled. “And does he have any sway over your decisions?”
Luna shook her head.
“See, Minerva? Nothing I can do. Besides, you know how he is. He thinks he deserves that sort of mistreatment; to him, it’s normal and expected.”
“Well, there is another thing you could do,” Minerva said with a wink. “You could tell your Moony how much you truly love him.”
Up at the counter, Severus, his fingers locked tightly around the back of Remus’ neck, was ordering a single scoop of vanilla in a cup. Two spoons.
Minerva sighed, shaking her head sadly. “You, dear, would have bought him thirty-one scoops, one of each flavour. Even better, you would have let him order for himself.”
***
After ice cream, the adults among them went to Joe Reed’s Pub to continue the celebration over drinks. Sirius nabbed a chair across from Remus and Severus. It meant he had to watch the two of them behave as happy lovers do, looking in each other’s eyes, playfully teasing, stealing quick kisses between conversations. Remus rested his head lovingly on Severus’ shoulder while running a hand through the man’s long black hair. Severus kept one hand suspiciously under the table, shooting Remus a suggestive look now and then, and Sirius did not want to imagine what that hand was up to under there.
Still, the atmosphere was so joyous that he couldn’t help having a good time. There were toasts to the director, to each of the production’s big stars, to the lighting crew and the stage crew and the costume crew, to the underage actors in their absence, and to the stage manager, himself. With all those toasts, everyone was quite drunk. Even so, when Remus got up to use the loo Sirius he made a beeline for the bar, where Sirius watched him quickly do a row of four shots before going on his way. Sirius wondered if he was trying to hide some of his drinking from Severus.
As if reading his thoughts, Severus, who didn’t appear to have seen the shots, said to him, “I think Remus drinks too much, so I’m trying to get him to tone it down. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, he gets drunk very quickly.”
“Maybe if you had let him eat more than half a scoop of ice cream,” Sirius snarked, “he’d be able to hold his liquor.”
The play was over, what did he care what Severus Snape thought of him? Minerva was right, he hadn’t tried hard enough to protect his Moony.
But Severus only mumbled disinterestedly, “Mmm, perhaps. Listen, Sirius, now that the play is over I’ll be spending more time at my own home. I’ll still see Remus often, but there will be longer stretches, sometimes five or six days in a row, where I won’t. So, I’m wondering if you’ll do me a favour during those times I’m away.”
“What makes you think I’d do anything for you, Snape?” It felt so good to reject the guy, he couldn’t help smiling through the fierce expression he was attempting to hold.
“Not for me, really,” said Severus. “It’s for Remus.”
Sirius softened at that. “Well, I’ll do it if it’s for him.”
“Good. I was hoping you would check in on him every now and again when I can’t be there. You see, he’s been harming himself a lot lately. Cutting. He says you know he does that?”
Sirius nodded. “I hate it. But yes, I know.”
“Well, as I say, he’s cutting a lot right now. I don’t know why, and he has no adequate explanation. I can see it becoming a dangerous situation if he’s alone for too long; he may take it too far. He’s even threatened suicide.”
“He has?” That was something he’d always worried about, but that Remus had never mentioned. “What exactly did he say? What was the context?”
Severus seemed to rush through the situation as he said, “We were fighting and he didn’t like something I was doing, so he thought he’d throw me off by saying, ‘I can’t take this. I’ll kill myself.’ Anyway, the point is I believe it would be helpful for you the check in on him. Stop by for coffee while I’m out of town. Maybe you could even speak to him yourself about the cutting. Who knows? Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
Sirius didn’t like the flippant explanation of the suicide threat, especially since Severus had added a bit of whine to his voice when he quoted Remus’ words. But he was pleasantly surprised that the guy was human enough to worry about the cutting. That it might become dangerous… yes, that was a concern Sirius had, too. And then there was the fact he could finally be with Remus without Severus around to spoil everything…
Yes, he immediately took out his phone and plugged in the first dates that Severus would be away, promising that he would visit Remus and take care of him in the other man’s absence.
He went home that night exhausted, and fell asleep hearing Shakespeare’s beautiful words, the audience’s applause, Remus’ adorable laugh, and Minerva’s light but apt chastisement in the ice cream shop, all going round and round in his head.